


Once Was Lost

by fullborn



Category: True Detective
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon-Typical Language/Homophobia/Violence, Fix-It, M/M, POV Alternating
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-04
Updated: 2019-05-04
Packaged: 2020-02-21 16:11:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 26,010
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18705787
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fullborn/pseuds/fullborn
Summary: ‘Y’never got married? Not once? I’d of sworn you were married,’ says Wayne, a kind of willing blindness that Roland hasn’t missed once. But then again, maybe it’s not willing. So he agrees to lend Wayne his memory, knowing full well that the rest of him belongs to another man.AKA Tom deserves a happier ending.





	Once Was Lost

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to Willsblackstag for initially suggesting the idea behind this and inadvertently sending me down the rabbit hole - hope you enjoy. This is fix-it but that doesn't mean there's not plenty of suffering; it's True Detective after all. I'm sorry _(i'm not)_
> 
> Work dedicated to the Scoot McNairy's Forehead Veins Appreciation Society :)

  

> _To see you again, isn’t love revision?_
> 
> _ It could have gone so many ways. _
> 
> _ This just one of the ways it went. _
> 
> _ Tell me another. _
> 
> ** One Love Story, Eight Takes | Brenda Shaughnessy  **

 

* * *

 

_i_

‘Y’never got married? Not once? I’d of sworn you were married.’ 

Wayne knows as soon as the words are out that he’s said one of those things, the kind that has Henry shaking with constrained frustration as he explains some shit over and over again: he’s tripped over something he ought to know. Roland’s face creases and he looks at Wayne, ultimately just squaring his shoulders as if preparing for the next faux pax. 

‘Well,’ he says, ‘when you don't talk to somebody for twenty-four years, you’re gonna miss some shit.’

And that’s when one of the doors open on the landing — a man descends the wooden staircase balancing a stack of dishes, bare feet and shirt half-buttoned like he belongs there. At home. Roland’s doesn’t seem surprised by this arrival but the man makes a half-choked noise as he see Wayne, frown splitting his forehead as he looks between the two of them.  

‘What the hell?’ he says.

And Wayne may be demented, sure, but he’s still a fucking detective and as he hears the man’s broken voice his brain rounds the bases at surefire speed. He realises with a jolt that he’s looking at Tom Purcell. Older sure, a grey beard shadowing his cheeks, pitted eyes sunk even deeper into his lined face and posture hunched from old age and years of enduring all the shit life could fling at him. 

‘Oh,’ says Wayne, and wonders if he should know about this. ‘How do you do, Mr. Purcell.’ 

He notes how Roland has moved between them, a kind of shield between Tom and whatever thought he sees Wayne cogitating. ‘Hey, I’d of told you Wayne was droppin’ by but you got in late,’ he says to Tom, casual. ‘We’re just doin’ the old catch-up routine, shootin’ the shit. Stay if you want.’

‘I thought you two hadn’t seen each other since —’ says Tom, frown deepening. He moves past them to dump the dishes in the sink, turns to Wayne with barely concealed dislike. Like he’s a bearer of nothing but bad news. Wayne can’t blame him, seeing as the memories he brings up can’t be pleasant — but then again, it doesn’t look like Roland’s presence reminds Tom of his dead and missing children and all that goes with that. In fact, he looks strangely _at ease_ at Roland’s side.

‘Aw, we got plenty to go over. Wayne here’s needs a hand with some things, memory wise. Thought I’d help an old friend out,’ Roland explains.

‘Right,’ says Tom. ‘I’ll get out of your way then.’ Roland catches his arm as Tom turns to leave; gaze almost beseeching. ‘It’s okay,’ Tom says, shrugging him off. ‘Y’all have fun.’  

They’re well established on the porch and chatting about everything and nothing, Wayne working his way up to the hard-sell when it hits him out of nowhere and he nearly spills his drink. Not married, sure, but maybe just about close. ‘No wife, no kids? Man, Roland, you goin’ tell me or you figure it’d be funny to let me get there on my own?’ 

Roland lets out a thin-mouthed  _hah!_ and swigs his ginger ale. ‘Ladies and gentlemen, the memory train arrives at the station.’

‘Did I know?’ asks Wayne, feeling the answer sliding on a tide just out of his reach. But judging by the look on Roland’s face, yes, yes he did and somehow he fucked it up. ‘Damn, Roland, of all the things that man’s been through he choses to live out here with you?’

‘Fuck off,’ says Roland but a grin slices across his worn face; Wayne sees he still has all his teeth. Man always had his charm, and luck to boot. ‘He saved me, you know. We saved each other. If he wants to hang around lookin’ at my ugly mug all day, well, I ain’t gonna complain.’ 

‘I feel like there’s a lot I’m not remembering, brother.’

Roland looks at him and rubs his sagging jowls, giving a contemplative grunt. ‘No shit,’ he says, and Wayne laughs despite himself. 

 

* * *

_  
ii _

Roland has a long list of regrets trailing behind him, a series of cigarette-butts and empty whiskey bottles that all lead back to the same place: that fucking interrogation room. Or, more to the point, the aftermath of that interrogation room — how he let Tom leave that holding cell without a friend in the world when he knew how untethered he really was. Why hadn’t he been there, steered him off the path of destruction before it was too late? _Because you’re a coward_ , grunts the dark voice in his head. _You built that man up and tore him down without the decency to look him in the eyes and apologise. You let him go at it alone. See where_ that _got him._  

He knows now, in his empty house with his truncated career, how terrible going at it alone really is. ‘I’m sorry, man,’ Roland groans up at some imaginary version of Tom, one that can listen and forgive. ‘I’m so fuckin’ sorry.’ 

Then he’s puking up last night’s dinner and it’s like everything he said to Tom in that room is burning bitter in his mouth. Poisonous. Roland dry-heaves until there’s nothing left to cry about.

 

* * *

 

_ 1990 _

  _‘Julie?’ says Tom, and something hard and blunt connects with his head. He hits the ground, perspective all wrong, hands grasping blindly as his vision fades from pink to black. Julie’s drawing on the wall above him the last thing he sees._

The first thought that solidifies in Tom’s mind as he wakes up is that he’s well and truly fucked. Pain pulses through his head like he’s been hooked up to a mains supply; the agony flares as he rolls onto his back. He groans. Tries to sit up. At first he thinks his balance is off because of the drinking and the head wound but as he shifts position on the floor he realises with a sick surge to his stomach that someone has tied his hands behind his back.  

‘Atta boy,’ says a voice as Tom pushes himself into a sitting position. Sees some pasty man in suit perched on a wall cot, gun held casually across his bent knees while he looks at Tom with a grin cleaving the corners of his mouth. ‘How you feeling, Mr. Purcell?’ says the fuck like he knows him. ‘Sorry to have to crack you one on the head, but see, normally folks aren’t allowed down here. Think you’d agree that you’re a special case though.’

‘The fuck?’ mumbles Tom. ‘Who the fuck’re you?’ 

The man’s grin looks fit to split his face. ‘Harris James, Mr. Purcell. Now, before you waste any time goin’ on about how this is a huge misunderstanding let’s get one thing clear: we both know you ain’t endin’ this night alive,’ says James, almost apologetic. 

Tom feels the blood racing in his head, but as he looks back at his captor he knows he’s not afraid of death or whatever it is this slick suit wants with him. ‘Where’s Julie?’ he croaks. Spits a smear of blood onto the floor. ‘What did you do to her?’

‘Can’t blame you for having a one track mind,’ says James. ‘But you got to understand, the only reason you don’t already have your brains poolin’ around your feet is that it’s substantially easier for me if you help out.’ 

He flips the gun up and presses it almost tenderly into the hollow of Tom’s cheek; Tom feels the _glub glub glub_ of the man’s pulse travelling down the barrel, tries to stay as still as possible. ‘Hell, I still could shoot you right here and now. But then how’d you know what happened to dear old Julie? You’ve come all this way, seems a bit sad to give up on the final hurdle.’

‘Fuck you,’ says Tom, but his voice comes out flat. This man has got him in one and he knows it. 

‘How about this?’ James asks, seemingly captivated by the sound of his own voice. ‘You play nice, come with me without any bullshit, I’ll let you ask a few questions ‘fore you die. What do you say, Tom?’

A sane person would think twice before striking a deal with their murderer, but Tom can’t see a way out of this particular problem. He nods, slowly, and James pulls the gun away with a pleased noise. ‘Good man,’ he says. ‘Before we go, I’ve got one question to ask you first. Where’s our mutual friend Dan O’Brien got to? I’m guessin’ that slippery shit was the one who directed you here, so come now, time’s a-wasting. 

‘I don’t know,’ Tom spits. 

James sighs. ‘Don’t disappoint me, Tommy. Quid pro quo: you show me yours I’ll show you mine. That’s how this deal works.’ 

There’s a long pause as a lie fails to come to Tom’s mind. 'I left him at the Western Motel out on I-49, don’t remember which room. His car’s outside,’ he finally rasps, and he hates how easy the words come out. He has no feeling for Dan but to give him over to this man is a cheap betrayal nonetheless. ‘You had Julie down here? By herself?’ He feels the wall behind him with the tips of his fingers and something hitches in his chest. ‘ _Why?’_

‘The Western Motel,’ James repeats ruminatively. ‘Can’t say I’ve had the pleasure of visitin’ that particular establishment.’ The pink glow clashes horribly with his hair, gives him a youthful cast that comes across preternaturally sinister as he says, ‘Yes, little Julie lived down here for, what, seven years? You’d know the precise time better than I do. She ate down here, drew her pictures down here, even slept on this bed without seeing the sun ‘cept in her dreams,’ he says, smoothing his hand out across the cot. 

_‘Jesus Christ.’_

‘Mmm, it wasn’t all that bad from what I gather,’ continues James. ‘Say what you will about the cage, but she was loved. Better than your whore wife thought you two could love her, at least. This what you want to hear, Mr. Purcell, or do you prefer not knowin’?’

Tom closes his eyes against the image his words bring up. His face is wet but he can’t wipe away the tears and mucus stringing from his nose so he bows his head and gives into it while James watches dispassionately. He’s had ten years to entertain every awful thought possible, yet this faux-bright dungeon feels like the worst fate imaginable — trapped underground, by walls that came to spend nearly as much time with Julie as he ever did. He howls. 

‘Hey,’ says James. ‘Keep it together. We got places to go, if you’d get on your feet.’ Tom sniffs into the crook of his knees and so James hauls him up by the hair, sends him staggering towards the door with the gun pressed to his back. ‘Remember,’ James says as they travel the passage way up into the main house. ‘One wrong move and I’ll cut this charmin’ conversation prematurely short. In here.’ 

He pushes Tom into a wood-panelled study and into a leather armchair, keeps his weapon trained on him while he picks up the phone. ‘Hey,’ James says. ‘It’s me.’ 

The room looks like it’s filled with a taxidermist’s portfolio; a stuffed lion leers across the desk, something small and upright like a marten mounted on a display at Tom’s feet. He stares at it with mild horror. 

‘I’m dealin’ with something at the minute but you can go ahead to the Western Motel and sort out the cousin. Yes. Yeah. Hold on a sec—’ James takes a handkerchief from his pocket and pulls out Tom’s revolver from under his jacket like a stage magician conjuring a prop. ‘Smith & Wesson Model 13,’ he relays. ‘.357. You got that?’ 

He puts the phone back on the cradle and makes a face, as if apologising for some rudeness or other. ‘I see you’ve already got the man’s blood on your hands,’ he says, waving the revolver at Tom before tucking it back in the waistband of his pants. ‘I hope you left him alive, otherwise this is goin’ to be a terrible waste of my man’s time.’

James moves around the desk and waves him upwards with his gun, but Tom doesn’t budge. ‘Wait,’ he says, hearing his voice cracking. ‘Where’s Hoyt? I want to look that bastard in the eye — I want to kill him.’ 

To his surprise, James laughs. ‘Oh, Tommy-boy,’ he says pityingly, ‘Mr. Hoyt hasn’t lived in this house for years and he has _never_ made it his business to find out what’s goin’ on in his basement.’ 

‘What the fuck’re you sayin’?’ Tom spits as James manhandles him to his feet. ‘I don’t understand…please, I need to know why — why _us?’_

‘Hold your horses,’ says James. He pushes open the front door and they descend the steps, gravel crunching underfoot as they stop at a sleek town car. ‘You’ve been good, but I’m afraid this is where you get in the trunk.’ 

Tom looks blankly at him. ‘I ain’t gettin’ in there,’ he says even as James raises the gun. ‘I need you to tell me why they took Julie. I need to know. Please, I ain't gonna try anything.’ The man has a hungry gleam in his eye, and Tom half expects him to order him to get on his knees — to which end he could not say, both outcomes too horrific to contemplate. But James reaches past him and pops open the back door instead with a flourish.

‘One last car ride, then.’ He sits Tom in the backseat with the gun pressed to his midriff, leans in like a parent adjusting a car seat. ‘Don’t get excited,’ James says with ghoulish chuckle, tugging open Tom’s belt with his free hand and then kneeling down to cinch Tom’s ankles together before he can figure out what’s going on. 

They drive. Tom lies on his back and watches the half-moon winking in and out beyond the linear passage of trees, tries not to think what the end of the road means. His arms going dead behind his back, cable ties cutting deep into skin. James adjusts the front mirror to check on him occasionally, fiddles with the radio dial when he’s not fixing Tom an unreadable expression with his reflection. 

‘I was a highway patrolman for ten years,’ he says. ‘Outta all the crash sites I caught, maybe fifteen of those fatalities I got to watch die with my own two eyes. Right there on the tarmac, or the car wreck, or wherever the impact flung ‘em. Funny, each and every one of them had the same look in their eyes just before the end, as the light disappeared. I look at you and it’s the same. So try tellin’ me, Mr. Purcell, that you ain’t grateful in your own way that I’m helpin’ you tie this whole thing off.’ 

Tom closes his eyes so he doesn’t have to meet James’ pale gaze in the mirror. ‘You can go to hell.’ 

‘Aw you don’t mean that. Your wife had that same look too, even back in ’80 when I handed her all that money — she could have gotten out of the white trash shit with that much cash; maybe that’s why she started poisoning herself instead. Once you got the look, see, livin’ just don’t seem all that worthwhile.’

Anger creeps into Tom’s voice, makes him feel braver than he is. ‘I don’t believe you.’

‘Hey, I’m the one impartin’ you with the secrets of the universe ‘fore you die and see it all for yourself. It’s all the same to me.’ James lights up a cigarette and cracks open the window an inch. ‘I think I fucked her before it all went down, not knowin’ what I’d have to down down the line; funny how everything’s tied up together in the end.’ Tom thinks no, it’s not funny at all. He feels sick to his stomach, whiskey and fear and horror all roiling around to create a nauseating concoction. 

He swallows, and chokes out the question that’s been gnawing at him since he woke up in the pink room and knew what it was like to be a prisoner. ‘Why Julie? What makes someone lock a ten year old girl in a basement, for Chrissake?’

‘I’m just the fixer,’ says James with a long drag of his smoke. ‘Certain people can’t be asked no more, and it seems Julie’s tryin’ real hard not to talk to anyone right now.’ He breathes out a grey exhale and turns his attention ahead. ‘Oh look. We’re here.’

Tom sees the trees give way to sky, and as James turns the car there’s the faintest glimpse of the old ranger tower silhouetted against the moon. The sight hits him like a slap to the face. ‘Please,’ he whimpers, ‘Not here.’ 

James kills the engine and gets out of the car. Tom starts to pray under his breath, can’t think of anything else but the Lord’s prayer but he’s having trouble getting the words out, throat constricted by panic. Then the door is yanked open and James pulls Tom out by the legs. He hits the ground at the man’s feet, hard. 

‘Folks say religious types are the best when it comes to withstandin’ torture,’ says James conversationally as he unbuckles the belt from around Tom’s ankles. ‘Higher power and all that, a reason and hope beyond it. Acceptin’ of it. In a way you’re lucky, Tom,’ he adds with a grin. ‘Not many people get to know how Christ himself felt on the way to Calvary.’

There’s dirt in his mouth and under his belly, real earth with him living on top. The thought of being under it is so awful Tom sobs a little. Sits up on his knees and retches into the shrubbery, throwing up with his forehead resting on the cool grass and hands like dead weights at his back. James steps back with a noise of disgust. ‘Alright then,’ he says. ‘Try wigglin’ some feeling back into your legs; I don’t want to carry you up them stairs but I will if I have to.’ 

It’s a brief reprieve but Tom takes it as a blessing. Slowly stretches his legs out and looks up at the moon, beautiful and far away. _Will wanted to be an astronaut when he was eight._ He knows there’s one child waiting for him, and that’s half a comfort — but then again, there’s another one that can still be helped even if her brother is long past saving. 

Harris James grabs Tom by the collar like a mama cat taking her kittens by the scruff - save with less maternal care - and pulls him towards the tower. Tom staggers drunkenly even though the alcohol has long passed through his system. A trickle of blood runs down his neck, down to where James clutches his shirt. He hopes the fucker gets his DNA all over his hands, if it has to come down to that: he imagines Roland coming back from some lab or other with righteous vindication and a name to blame.  He wonders if the man will miss him; he’s the only one that might. 

‘I gotta know one last thing,’ says Tom as they climb the steps of the tower. ‘Give me this one thing.’ James makes a non-committal noise to show he’s listening. ‘Julie, she’s out there, right? Y’all ain’t done nothing to her — she’s alive?’

James sighs as Tom stops to look him full in the face, unctuous expression replaced by one of annoyance. ‘That’s right. Your girl got away: the Great Escape starring Julie Purcell. Footloose and fancy-free,’ he says.  

Meaning she’s out there, without a father for ten years and soon to be without any kin at all. It’s just him left.  

‘Thank you,’ says Tom, half-turning back to resume climbing — then swings and headbutts James full in the face. 

The man staggers and Tom sticks out his foot, an unpracticed manoeuvre but it works and James trips backwards over the railing desperately reaching for Tom’s neck to stop his fall. The gun goes off and Tom flinches but shot goes wide and then he’s running back down the tower stairs, adrenaline and fear giving him the energy to flee for his life. They were only two flights up, fall not far enough to kill James; as Tom reaches the ground he sees the man beginning to stir from where he hit the ground. 

Tom’s legs are wobbly and maybe that’s a good thing because he staggers right as the gun goes off behind him and the bullet chips into a tree trunk to his left instead of blowing his head off. He ducks like a rabbit and makes for the woods, crashing through brush and undergrowth with little care for the branches that tear his skin. Once he’s far enough in for the moon to be invisible in the treeline he throws himself down on his front and listens. Waits for pursuit. But either Harris James is in a worse state that he let on or Tom is not worth pursuing: the minutes stretch on and the only sound is that of the occasional barn owl and his own laboured breathing. 

He waits a good ten minutes before climbing painfully to his feet. Without the moon there’s scarce for him to see, no guides or path to follow and a high chance he might trip and break his own neck stumbling around as he is with his arms tied behind his back. But there’s no other choice. Tom steels himself, thinking of Julie out there feeling just as lost as he is before setting off into the surrounding dark. 

 

* * *

 

Roland wakes to the sound of someone hammering his door and thinks that the house better be on fire, or someone’s going to pay. He rolls over and feels Lori stir beside him, curling her arm questioningly above her head half in the realm of sleep. ‘What’s that?’ she mumbles.

‘Not girl scouts sellin’ cookies at any rate,’ says Roland darkly, pulling his service weapon from the beside table and checking the chamber. The last thing he expects when he pulls open the front door is to see Tom Purcell, bloodied and shivering in his shirtsleeves like he’s just clawed his way from an inner circle of hell to be on Roland’s doorstep. ‘What happened to you?’ Roland says, but Tom has already pushed past him to drip blood on the woven hallway rug, one foot tracking in a mix of mud and blood and the other plain mud. ‘Where’s your shoe got to?’ 

Not that Roland’s not glad to see him but the circumstances are so _wrong_ he doesn’t make to put away his gun. It’s been on his mind all day, how he left Tom to get out from holding alone — the man AWOL since then, Roland beginning to suspect the worst. Trailer abandoned, car gone, no sign of him at any of the usual bars: in truth Roland had been worried sick. And now Tom is in his home in the middle of the night and he can’t bring himself to put out a comforting hand. 

‘Tom, you’ve got to understand those things I said in the box — you got a right to be upset,’ Roland starts to say but Tom waves his hand to silence him. His wrists shiny and scraped raw. 

‘That don’t matter,’ he says, and Roland frowns. Tom had looked crushed, downright destroyed by how Roland turned on him to follow the line of questioning — and now he’s knocking Roland’s apologies aside like they don’t mean anything. ‘Look, Roland, you gotta listen to me. I didn’t want to come durin’ the day in case they were watchin’ but I need you.’ He’s blinking rapidly, trembling like a rescue dog and staring at Roland like he might divine his meaning through eye-contact alone. ‘It’s bad. Julie needs my help. _Our_ help.’

These last words send Roland’s hopes plummeting; Tom has obviously relapsed with full force and hit the ground running. ‘Tom —’ he says gently, ‘Have you been drinkin’?’ 

The web of muscle above Tom’s nose contracts as he frowns at Roland in confusion. ‘No,’ he says, the switches tack. ‘I mean, yeah the other day when they let me go, but I’m sober now — can’t drink when I need my wits about me. Jesus, Roland. That’s beside the point!’

‘We got to ring your sponsor, lemme get the phone,’ Roland says, dredging up some calm and levelling it at Tom’s nervous energy. ‘You got his card, right?’ He makes to move to the kitchen but Tom grabs his arm, grip so tight his fingernails dig into Roland’s skin.

‘ _Listen_ goddamnit,’ Tom hisses. ‘Some fuck tried to kill me: I saw the pink room, I know what they did to her.’ His face twists into an ugly mask of desperation as he tries to make himself understood. ‘They locked her away for _years._ She was always good at drawin’, y’know.’ 

‘Hey, try and calm down, Tom. Take a breath with me, huh? Someone tried to kill you?’ All the times Roland saw Tom out of his mind with drink and misery, he never looked like this. Manic. Possibly dangerous. 

‘Some rat-faced fuck, suit, ginger hair and a fuckin’ greasy smile,’ Tom says, still holding onto Roland like he’s the only thing keeping him upright. ‘Harrison something —’

‘— Harris James?’ asks Roland, and Tom nods, spattering fresh blood onto the freshly painted moulding. There’s an open cut leaking from his eyebrow and a bruise blooming on his cheek; his hands are scratched to pieces. ‘How’d you get those cuts, huh? Talk me through it, c’mon.’ Roland leads Tom to the kitchen, pulls a bottle of antiseptic and the plaster tin from a drawer. 

‘It was dark. Couldn’t see where I was goin’ in them woods, runnin’ for my life,’ says Tom fervently as Roland takes the rubbing alcohol to his cuts. ‘Thought I was goin’ break my legs or something, but then _I felt him_ , Roland. And I knew I wasn’t lost at all. Got to the river, and I was followin’ it all night ‘fore I got back onto a road but I had that sense he was keepin’ me safe all the while.’ 

‘Who’re you talkin’ about?’ asks Roland, totally out of his depth and no where near learning to swim. 

Tom stops Roland’s hand mid-ministration. ‘ _Will,’_ he says, ‘My boy. I know it was him out there in Devil’s Den like I know it’s you in the room with me now. I felt it.’ All of his religious conversion and talk of God, none of it had the certainty that he’s levelling at Roland now. There’s unshed tears in his eyes, an unbalanced feeling that thrums dangerously through the air: as if Tom might lean in and kiss Roland like it’s five years ago and they’re still learning how to let themselves touch each other, instead of the here and now. 

Roland swallows, deeply unsettled at this turn in the conversation. Frees his hand and continues feeling about for cuts on Tom’s scalp. ‘Jesus, that’s a golf-ball of a lump,’ he says, prodding the site tentatively. ‘Think you’d have a concussion from a whack like that. 

‘I’m not crazy,’ says Tom, and Roland shifts guiltily. Like he hadn’t been entertaining the notion. ‘I’m fine. This is about helpin’ Julie, she’s out there and they’re lookin’ for her.’ 

‘Uh-huh,’ mumbles Roland. ‘Still think you should see a doctor though.’ He tells himself that he’s doing the right thing, patching Tom up like in days of old when he still got into more bar fights than he could handle, but this is nothing like normal. The police lieutenant in him is bristling with suspicion — in the state he’s in Tom could have done anything. ‘Tell me one thing before we get onto that,’ says Roland interrupting Tom mid-flow. ‘I got to know…was it you that killed Dan O’Brien?’ 

Tom’s staring at him, eyes flat and dark in his pinched face. ‘What?’ he says hoarsely, and Roland lowers his hands to look back, see if he’s lying.

‘Troopers found his body in the quarry pits off Campbell yesterday morning,’ Roland says, ‘Pretty fresh bullet-hole in his skull. He called us the other day, said he had something but it looked at the time like he was full of shit. Maybe not.’

Tom drags his ruined hands down his stubbled cheek and lets out a moan. Roland leans in; without Wayne and the whole police cabal here for this interrogation he can let himself be kind. ‘Did you do it?’ he asks, voice low and without judgement.

‘You really askin’ me that?’ Tom spits. ‘You know me, man. You _know_ me.’

‘So, did you?’

Tom leaps to his feet and glares down at Roland, gaze electric with anger and disgust. ‘No, I did not, goddamnit. You come at me with this shit — what, accusin’ me of being a fuckin’ pervert and kidnappin’ my own child ain’t good enough? Jesus, _Lieutenant_ , what do _you_ think?’ 

‘I think you’ve taken a crack to the head, might not be thinkin’ straight.’ He hates how level his voice comes out. Tom flinches. ‘I want to help. Shit, I’ll help even if you did do it but you got to tell me the whole story.’ The words are landing exactly the way he doesn’t want them to, Tom’s brow growing more and more furrowed as he stares at Roland like he’s seeing him for the very first time. 

‘This was a mistake,’ Tom says slowly. ‘This is all a mistake.’

‘Hey,’ Roland says, ‘Hey, now.’ He stands up, tries to put the flat of his hand against Tom’s neck but Tom steps back like Roland’s making to throttle him. ‘We can figure this out,’ implores Roland, feeling Tom slipping out of his reach as he did in ’86, not knowing how to keep him at his side and in his bed. 

The doorbell rings. Roland swings around, wondering who in the shit is calling in the middle of the night and sees the unmistakable shape of uniformed police outlined in the hall’s glass panelling. Tom’s eyes slide between the front door and Roland, widening in disbelief. 

‘You called the cops?’ he hisses, betrayal bitter in his tone. ‘Roland?’ He flings a finger out accusatorially and Roland can’t help it: he reflexively glances at the gun resting on the counter. Tom freezes. 

‘I didn’t —’ Roland croaks. ‘Tom, please, I wouldn’t…’ but then Lori opens the front door and they hear the murmur of voices in the hall. Tom shudders, pain taut across his frame as he backs into the kitchen away from Roland. 

‘They’re goin’ to find my gun,’ he says wonderingly, and laughs. ‘Motherfucker. Shoulda let him shoot me rather’n pin this on me.’

‘Tom,’ says Roland, and Tom looks at him as if through a haze. ‘Tom, it’s always been you. You gotta know that.’ He’s almost begging. Something breaks in Tom’s expression and Roland does nothing to stop him as he pulls back a bony fist and hits Roland in the face. When he straightens there’s blood in his mouth and the cops are in the room pulling Tom off him, pinning him to the floor and cuffing his reddened wrists. Tom’s yelling, struggling, trying to get at Roland with a wild fury but he’s no match for two seasoned patrolmen. 

Lori is standing in the doorway with her hands over her mouth. ‘I’m sorry,’ she keeps saying over and over, ‘Please, Tom, I’m sorry,’ but Tom only has eyes for Roland as they haul him away. Blazing with something like hatred. Or worse, disappointment. Roland sinks to the floor and lets the blood drip onto his shirt and the white kitchen tiles, pain lancing his cheekbone and tearing his heart. 

He deserves it. 

 

* * *

 

He’s no Wayne when it comes to tracking but Roland can read a scene alright. Detective or not, Devil’s Den gives him the creeps — but the thing that’s really turning his stomach is the neat bullet hole piercing the underside of the watchtower’s third platform. He leans over the railing and peers down to the tree-line, to the tree with a bullet in it. He’s willing to bet his badge that both shots were fired from the same gun.

His throat burns as he takes a swig from his hip flask and the open air lances his nostrils. A nice day to play hooky from the office, but he can’t bring himself to enjoy it. ‘Shit,’ Roland says, scowling. He limps down the steps and trudges into the woods, bleak thoughts clouding his mind as he scours the area for signs of a struggle. 

It might not be today but he knows Lori is going to leave him; it’s just a matter of time. _‘What did you expect me to do?’ she exclaims when he rounds on her after the police cruiser has pulled away. ‘You told me he’s a murder suspect for God’s sake, that you were worried he was going to hurt himself and then he turns up at our house? I am not the bad guy, Roland. Don’t you dare blame me for this.’_ And he doesn’t really: there’s no one he blames but himself. 

They could sell tickets to the shitshow that is his life — _Watch Roland West alienate the people he cares about in a record time of forty-eight hours!_ Wayne better watch himself. This thought makes hims laugh darkly, the noise jarring in the forest where Will Purcell was killed but he can’t help it. It’s then that he sees the shoe. Poking forlornly out of a scrubby bush, the twin to Tom’s muddy leather one from the night before. _Bingo._  

Roland lights a cigarette and reviews the facts. 

The shoe in the woods, two bullet-holes between theranger tower and the trees. Tom’s story starts to feel less like raving and more like truth: Harris James was here and tried to kill Tom. Harris James equals Hoyt’s man. 

He calls Wayne from a payphone and things go south from there. Roland considers it a general rule of thumb that if you go from trying to clear a friend for murder to burying a body in the woods, then you’ve kind of screwed the pooch on that one. The truth dies with Harris James as the man bleeds out in Roland’s arms. They fail, again. 

 

* * *

 

Roland drinks so much in the coming weeks that his memory of the murder investigation fades into one big blackness save the sick feeling in his stomach and the lurid tint of the sensationalist newsreels. But there’s one question in the deposition that continues to haunt him well after the verdict is passed: Kindt’s bland face, his voice asking, _‘In your opinion, why did the defendant choose to approach you at your place of residence on the night of May 27th, 1990?’_

The truth: _Because we loved each other once. I told him I could help him. I tried._

But truth has no place in this rigmarole. What Roland had said was: ‘I had contact with Mr. Purcell in a law enforcement capacity during the 1980 investigation, and afterwards when the case reopened. I think he was looking for a familiar face.’ Funny, he used to like himself as a man but the more he hears himself speak the more he comes to despise Lt. Roland West. 

Then there’s the trial. It’s not like the jury isn’t sympathetic; they like knowing what it takes for a man to crack. _Poor man_ , they whisper after church and in the comfort of their own homes, _after what happened you can’t really blame him for going crazy, can you?_ Alcoholism, a suicide attempt in ’83 that conveniently comes to light coupled with Tom’s wild stories accusing the Hoyt family of bizarre pink rooms and murder: the consensus is unanimous. Have the man committed.

Somewhere some bastard with a basement dungeon and enough power to destroy a man’s credibility must be pretty pleased with himself. 

 

* * *

 

‘You that fella with the dead kids?’ asks the first inmate Tom speaks to at Conway Psychiatric Hospital, leaning over him as if they share some great secret. 

Tom looks blankly into his pockmarked, shifty face and tells himself he can’t allow himself to forget. Dredges the words up with a sigh. ‘My daughter, she’s out there,’ he says. 

The guy winks. ‘Right on,’ he says, hands Tom a cigarette with a flourish like the admission is worth a prize. Like he’s won something.

 

* * *

_ 1992_

Roland writes letters. He posts some of them. Imagines them winding up in Tom’s hands, him sitting with knitted brow to read Roland’s smudged apologies and inanities, surroundings something like a prison cell except it’s not prison really. It might be worse. 

He receives no indication that they are even delivered until one day one isn’t, lands back in his letterbox with _return to sender_ and nothing else. It sends him into a spiral of telephoning with bourbon and a tightening knot of dread on the side. He rings the psych hospital but Tom is no longer there, he’s in some other place with some other name even further away. 

‘Texas?’ Roland asks, tongue heavy with drink and deadened worry. ‘You got an address or am I meant to shove this letter up my ass?’ He might as well: there’s no reply, as usual.

 

* * *

  _1993_

Tom likes Texas. He likes the foreign heat, the lack of grey, the sweat that rolls down his shirt like a penance. He likes that it’s not Arkansas. No one knows his name or his children’s names, or otherwise gives a damn about one more sad fuck arriving on transfer to the psychiatric hospital. 

It should have been funny, his parents long having moved from Shreveport to sunnier climbs for his father’s health — then the onset of cancer, their only son locked up nearly six hundred miles away. He doesn’t know how they orchestrated the move but early in the year he was transferred out of state on compassionate grounds. His parents visit between hospital appointments and Tom watches the flesh slowly creep from his father’s face and hands with each passing week. It’s not pleasant but this kind of death he can handle. It’s expected. 

He’s learned from Conway that particularly weird inmates are best avoided, unprompted and unprovoked, but that doesn’t mean that he’s completely left alone. There’s the podgy guy that tries explaining his multiple phobias at each mealtime despite the fact that Tom doesn’t know a word of Spanish; the sinister trucker that only speaks to assure him that the aliens will come back one day with the surety of a preacher; the waxen faced addict with the sharp edges and a dead-eyed watchfulness that sets Tom on edge. Out of all of them, crazy and half-crazy, he suspects that this man is actually dangerous. 

‘That your pops?’ the addict says out of the blue one day, watching from the window where Tom’s mother helps her husband into their car. It won’t be long now. 

Tom’s glances at the man, who has his thin fingers twisted around the stub of a cigarette and his sunken eyes on the car park like he’s not aware Tom’s there — but he had spoken. ‘He’s dyin’,’ Tom says. Simplicity is easiest. 

‘We’re all dying, brother,’ drawls the man, like Tom cares about pedantry and depressive thought. His doctor says he needs to focus on the positive. They stare at the darkening sky in silence, Tom wanting to break away and leave but strangely magnetised by the man’s manner. ‘Gonna be a dust storm later,’ the man says. ‘The great drift. Your folks better hurry.’ 

There’s something attenuated and probing in his gaze; it doesn’t seem so far a reach for him to be attuned to the weather and the greater shifts beyond. 

Tom’s father dies. The addict moves around the place like he’s in a great drift of his own, and Tom makes no effort to talk to him again until he returns to the common area after a session to find the emaciated motherfucker stretched out in his chair thumbing through Tom’s bible like he’s whiling away a night on the porch. Like it’s his property.

‘What’d you think you’re doin’?’ says Tom, ready to be pissed. 

The man tilts in his chair, taking Tom in with a slow ease. ‘Hey man,’ he says, ‘Just taking the opportunity to peruse the good book…no offence intended.’ He skips a few chapters and slides a letter from between the flimsy pages. ‘Don’t worry, I only got eyes for the gospel of Matthew, not, uh, _Roland West_ of AR. Friend of yours? Strikes me as kinda funny, keeping word of man next to word of God.' 

Tom feels the flush spreading to his face and balls up his fists. Anger useless but he can’t help but feel its sting.  

The man shifts his attention to the book, unbothered. Reads laconically: _‘Then Jesus said to his disciples, "Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.”’_ Reckon you must be up there on His list, seeing as you look like the kind of man who makes a habit out of denying his own nature.’ 

‘What the fuck’s that supposed to mean?’ scowls Tom.

‘Oh, nothin’,’ says the man, but the gleam in his hooded eyes tells a different story as he leans forward, an errant brown curl falling across his pallid forehead. ‘Except, you ever think, what if man’s nature _is_ his cross? The denial of which is a denial of the burden God himself created for him to bear? I’m not so proud as to deny my own programming.’

‘Guess you don’t get invited back to a lot of bible studies.’ 

A ponderous kind of grin splits the guy’s face; it looks ill, unpracticed. ‘Shi- _it_ ,’ he says, like Tom’s said something funny, ‘thought you _Jesus is Lord_ types were meant to be all evangelical for the word, but you’re a prickly sonofabitch. Remind me of a, what you call it, a muskrat. Swimming under the radar kinda man.’ 

‘I ain’t interested in your shit,’ says Tom, and plucks the bible out of the addict’s slack hands who raises them, unprotesting and almost mocking. Surveys Tom with a kind of flat interest. Like he’s a specimen in a jar. From this point on the man says things, weird philosophical non-sequiturs that leave Tom vaguely disturbed but he can’t bring himself to mind it too much. It’s contact of sorts. And if some of it gets under his skin, well, that’s his own damn fault. It’s his _nature_.

The week before the addict gets out he leans in with his elbow nearly in Tom’s plate, says very low so that it comes across as a confession: ‘Didn’t know you lost a kid.’  

Tom fixes his eyes on his fork. There’s no reason to let this comment among many to get to him but he can’t help but imagine Julie, unimaginable in her twenties and still out of his reach. ‘Lost?’ he says, spearing a slice of bacon. 'I _lost_ both of ‘em.’ The man’s death-mask of a face doesn’t react, but he makes a kind of grunt in the back of his throat like acknowledgement.

The comments dry up. Tom takes it as a sign of something shared. Something respected. Keeps the letters from Roland in his inner coat pocket beside his cigarettes. 

 

* * *

_ 1996 _

‘What am I meant to do?’ mutters Roland to the attentive clamour of dogs gazing at him with slavish hunger. ‘Go out to Texas and get on bended knee, beg for forgiveness or absolution or anything else that don’t mean shit? Quit lookin’ at me like that, big guy…. you’re gonna get what you want, you selfish mutt, what about what I want? Huh?’ 

The big dog in question play-bows, barks an affirmation and Roland relents. Puts down their bowls and watches them scramble to their breakfast. ‘Besides, I don’t think he’d want _my_ face to be the first thing he sees after six years in the loony bin. Might turn round and check the fuck back in.’ 

A terrier yaps in agreement and Roland scowls. ‘Y’all’re no help.’ He tries not to think of Tom disappearing into the vastness of the great state never to reemerge, words remaining unsaid: _I believe you. I miss you. Get the fuck out of my head._

 

* * *

 

The sun blazes down and there’s no fences or walls to keep him in. He sticks to what he knows, feels that if he takes on anything more he might crack open the memory of Hoyt’s basement, long repressed to keep himself sane: he killed Dan O’Brien, served the minimum sentence, is no longer a threat to anyone. No pink rooms to speak of. And so he’s released into the world, leaving him free to work on his dead dad’s car under the hot Texas sun. The months drag on and his skin freckles and burns and his mother becomes more and more forgetful in her grief. The car runs, but there’s nowhere for him to go. 

‘Don’t you let me die here,’ his mom says one day as they sit on the concrete listening to the car metal tick and cool as the shade stretches its long fingers out to reach them. ‘Bury me next to my grandson, y’hear me? I don’t want to end up as ashes on any old wind like your father. And Will shouldn’t be on his own, not at his age.’ Lucy, it seems, doesn’t count. 

Tom sips his iced tea and peels a length of sunburn from his arm, rolls it up and flicks it into the dead grass. ‘Alright, mom.’ He wonders who has been caring for his son’s grave in the years apart; the thought of it overgrown and lonely makes him sick. ‘You’re right, we shouldn’t be so far away from Will.’ _And Julie_ , he thinks but he daren’t say it in case his mother slips further back in time and can’t find her way out again. He fears for them both.

 

* * *

_1997_

There’s few bars that Roland hasn’t kicked up some shit in at one point or another but that doesn’t mean he’s not open to new experiences. Some dipshit makes a graphic comment about the regular barmaid and Roland seizes on the chance to start a fight: quite literally seizes the guy around the neck and flings him off his barstool. The kid’s buddies come to his rescue and soon the blood is welling on Roland’s knuckles and lip, him nearing fifty and still getting the shit beat out of him — you’d think that the practice would do him good but the end result is gloriously still the same. He has a reason to feel like hell. 

‘Leave it,’ cautions Marvin the bartender, half-cocking his shotgun at the boys as one drives his foot into Roland’s ribs. Pretty sure the gun’s loaded with blanks but it looks like the boys aren’t willing to find out; they bounce without so much as a parting blow and leave Roland dripping blood onto the dance floor, while the rest of the bar patrons pretend not to have noticed the altercation.

He crawls over to the bar and pulls himself upright, slaps a ten on the counter but Marvin returns it as he leads Roland to the back office. ‘Sober up,’ he advises with a growl ‘If you promise not to do shit like that again I’ll even bring you some ice.’

‘I ain’t promisin’.' 

‘Hell, I’ll bring the ice anyway but you are treadin’ one fine line, West.’ Marvin trudges out of the room, and Roland sinks to the floor in a bludgeoned daze. A pounding starting nicely behind his eyes, whole left cheekbone throbbing painfully. 

Marvin grunts from the door, string bean arm cocked at an angle holding out a tea-towel packed with ice. ‘This fella just come in askin’ after you,’ he says, and gestures to the man beside him. ‘I told him you’re indisposed but he’s a stubborn sumbitch.’ He hands the ice to his companion and drags his hands down his battered jeans to dry, advises the man as he leaves, ‘You better get this sad fucker outta here before someone else kicks his ass.’  

‘That someone might be me,’ says the man with humourless smile. ‘I ain’t decided yet. God knows he’d deserve it.’ 

Roland looks up and feels his whole stomach perform a double-helix. He thinks maybe he took one too many hits to the head but there is Tom Purcell, lean and more freckled than Roland has ever seen him with his familiar tired gaze fixed on Roland. Flecks of grey in his hair and stubble, hair shorn short and tufted like he took the scissors to it himself. It’s a disorienting reversal: for a moment Roland sees the scene from above except it’s Tom sprawled and bleeding on the floor dead-drunk, not Roland.  

‘You’d tell me if I was hallucinatin’?’ says Roland, tongue heavy in his mouth.  

Tom takes a half-step into the room, eyes flicking over the bruises and cuts on Roland’s face and hands with a slight frown. ‘I’ve found it don’t help much,’ he says, ‘But sure. You’re hallucinatin’.’ He holds out a veined hand and Roland stares at it with unfocused confusion. Tom’s palm is dry and chapped in his own shaking grip, but real. Present. Tom pulls him up and then Roland is on his own unsteady feet looking him full in the face. 

‘Hey, Lieutenant West,’ says Tom. ‘Been some time, huh?’ 

Roland says, ‘It’s just plain Mr. West nowadays.’ His heart a clenched thing. 

‘I know. I, uh, got your letters.’

There’s a pause as Roland takes in this confirmation, his writings received and presumably read, then says, ‘Though I respond to _asshole. Monumental shit-for-brains. Idiot._ Whatever you want, man.’ 

_‘Roland.’_

Tom’s still holding Roland’s hand but keeps him at an arm’s length— it’s been six years after all and their last meeting hovers uncertainly between them, underlined by the bruises on Roland’s face. It’s this fact that makes Roland lurch forward and wrap Tom in a bone crushing hug, bleeding nose and propriety be damned. Tom makes a soft grunt of surprise and the ice spills onto the floor with a loud clatter to be ignored, his hands suspended in the air before he slowly lowers them onto Roland’s back. Roland begins to sob. 

He feels Tom’s chest hitch under his grip. ‘Hey. Hey, it’s okay,’ Tom murmurs. ‘I ain’t mad anymore, y’know.’

‘I’m so fuckin’ sorry, man. For everything. I —I fucked up.’ 

‘Yeah…so did I.’ Tom brings his hand up to clasp the back of Roland’s neck, rubs a thumb through the short hair on his neck. ‘It’s okay. Hey.’

The embrace stretches on like this as the shaking of Roland’s shoulders stills and he finally sniffles, pulls back and makes an attempt at a laugh. ‘Fuckin’ look at me, cryin’ like a sad sonofabitch,’ he says wiping his eyes. ‘You’re lookin’ good though, lookin’ like a real Tex man. I’m glad.’ 

Tom leans down and scoops up some of the melting ice and presses it against Roland’s swollen eye-socket. ‘Ain’t sure I can say the same to you. Looks like you lost a fight with a rare steak,’ he remarks. Cold water slides down his thin fingers and into his cuff but he makes no move to let Roland take the impromptu ice-pack. ‘Let’s get the hell outta here ‘fore that skinny motherfucker out there remembers I’ve been banned since ’84.’

‘He musta mellowed out since then,’ Roland grunts. ‘I been tryin’ that for years.’  

They take the walk of shame out of the bar, Roland leaning heavily on Tom’s shoulder with his bad leg nearly buckling under him with every second step. ’Til next time ladies,’ Roland calls with a wink to Marvin as they leave, but the grin drains from his face as they are their way into the carpark and he steadies himself against Tom. A little more heavily than needed, but he’ll take any touch he can get. 

He stops for a breather at Tom’s car, tries to decide whether or not he’s going to get sick. Tom stands by and scuffs his shoes against the pavement — he knows the drill, many a night Roland spent hovering at Tom’s side while the man dry-heaved all over town. ‘Nice ride,’ Roland says eventually, swallowing his bile. 

‘It was my dad’s,’ says Tom, not looking at Roland or the black car. ‘I been fixin’ it up since I got out; old man never cared much for cars and it ain’t doin’ much for him now.’ He pats the bonnet and gets into the driver’s side, leaving Roland feeling like a world-class dick as they pull away from the bar.

‘You gotta direct me, no fallin’ asleep,’ says Tom after a long stretch of silence along the unlit road. ‘Eyes front.’

Roland jerks upright. ‘Shit, you just missed my turn,’ he says after he figures out where they are. Takes the chance to observe Tom’s dark profile, the light shifting and etching deeper lines on his face as he pulls a u-turn in the road. ‘I’m sorry,’ he finally says, and to his embarrassment tears start to leak down his cheeks, twice in one night. Jesus.

‘I got plenty of gas in this thing,’ says Tom. ‘Five seconds off my life ain’t much.' 

They get the turn this time around and the car jolts as they take to the uneven country road. ‘Nah,’ sniffs Roland. ‘I mean ‘bout your dad. Didn’t know that he passed.’

Tom swallows, keeps his gaze fixed on the potholes and scrubby trees emerging out of the dark. ‘He got sick real fast. Wasn’t too bad, all things considered,’ he says. ‘Got to see him at least before it happened. This you?’ He shakes off the memory as he peers up at the shape of Roland’s house on the slope. 

‘Yeah. This is me.’

They sit in the car, both unwilling to break the moment until Roland gets out and throws up in the grass. ‘There it is,’ says Tom, leans with his forearms on the car roof and watches Roland’s bent back. Roland flashes him the finger. Throws up some more and then Tom comes around and takes his arm for the last leg of the journey. 

‘You just gotta sleep upstairs, huh?’ grumbles Tom as they mount the wooden steps to Roland’s bedroom. Roland dumps his jacket on the floor and stumbles to the bed, collapses face down with a groan. ‘Lemme help,’ says Tom and Roland feels the tug of his hands as he pulls off Roland’s cowboy boots.  

‘I’ll clean up in the mornin’,’ says Roland into the bedspread. ‘Don’t go. I don’t want you to go.’ 

‘I ain’t got anywhere else to be,’ he hears Tom say. His hand the briefest of touches on Roland’s back as sleep drags him into the dark. 

 

* * *

 

A pounding headache greets Roland as he opens his eyes. Thought slowly returning with the pain and memory of the previous night; he sits up among the tangle of blankets and tries to remember. His boots lie on the floor. He wasn’t dreaming.  

He makes it downstairs after a brief wash and change but anything grander like a shower is beyond him and his bruised ribs. The suns streams through the window; it’s late. The room empty but there’s the smell of freshly brewed coffee and Roland follows it outside to the verandah. And there’s Tom, leaning against the rail, shaving in the open with a disposable razor with his face angled towards the treeline like it’s his morning routine. Like he belongs there. 

‘Mornin’,’ says Roland, voice gravelly with last night’s whiskey. 

Tom turns, knocking the mug of water for his razor off the railing with his elbow. ‘Shit,’ he murmurs around the cigarette clamped between his teeth. ‘Wasn’t expectin’ you up and about so early.’ He’s only halfway done but he hastily wipes the shaving foam from his face with his towel, peers with annoyance at the mug in the grass below. ‘How’re you feelin’?’

‘Like shit,’ Roland says truthfully. He joins him at the railing and the both survey the property, warm in the early brightness. It feels too familiar, too like the old days when Roland would wake up to find Tom pottering about the apartment on the weekend fixing something or other. He tries not to think about it.

Tom gestures at the fencing, says with a half-laugh, ‘What’s with all the dogs? I woke up to them all barkin’ fit to burst, reckoned they were hungry so I put out some kibble. That okay?’

‘Whiny bastards,’ Roland says. ‘Course they got you thinkin’ I starve ‘em.’ 

‘Never thought you was a dog person.’

‘I wasn’t. I don’t know, they grow on you I guess. Ain’t exactly got a lot of company out here.’ 

There’s a spot of white shaving foam smeared against the red of Tom’s earlobe. Roland focuses in on it, imagines all the times he had his mouth so close to that spot, words forced from his lips as he pressed deeper into Tom: the crushing intimacy of it. He can’t remember what those words were. _God. Tom. Fuck._  

He reaches out and casually wipes away the foam from Tom’s ear with his thumb. Tom looks at him, stilled.

‘Missed a spot,’ Roland says by way of explanation, holding up his fingers. He’s so damn stupid before his morning coffee; he should keep his hands to himself. He busies himself by stealing a swig from Tom’s mug, then passes the drink back to Tom. ‘You, uh, back in town to stay or…?’ 

A tightness plays around the lines of Tom’s mouth, then disappears as he says, ‘My mom don’t want to die in Texas and we ain’t got much reason to stay there, no family ties anyway.’ He rubs the remaining stubble on his upper lip. ‘Her memory’s goin’ and it helps for her to be back where she grew up. I got her stayin’ in this gated community place out in Baldwin.’ 

Roland considers this extra weight on Tom Purcell with a dark expression. ‘My grandma got dementia. Could only fuckin’ remember the stuff from when she was a kid, thought I was her pa’s dead brother near the end,’ he says. ‘I’m sorry to hear that about your mom.’

Tom shrugs, breathes out stream of smoke. ‘Other reasons besides. I had to do some diggin’ but someone finally told me you was the one packed my trailer up back in the day. There’s some of the kids’ stuff I’d like to have if you’ve still got it.’

Roland tries to keep his voice light as he says, ‘Yeah man. Of course.’ Surely this wasn’t the only reason Tom looked him up; it had to be something more. But maybe it wasn’t. ‘You want those boxes now or later?’ 

‘I ain’t in a hurry if you ain’t.’ 

‘Sounds good to me,’ says Roland and his heart is back doing aerobatics to rival the Little Rock airshow. He can’t help but hope that Tom will stick around. _This time._ ‘I see you ain’t kicked the smokin’,’ he says, gesturing to Tom’s cigarette.

Tom grimaces, stubs the filter out into the dregs of his coffee. ‘Bein’ sober’s hard enough,’ he says. ‘Guess I still got plenty of other vices to go round.’

‘Mm,’ Roland says noncommittally. A man can live in hope.

 

* * *

 

Tom drives in the afternoon with his window wound down. He’s been back in Arkansas for a month but he’ll be damned if he doesn’t still feel dread surprise at every familiar landmark and road-sign as they drive from Roland’s place back to the bar of the night before. 

‘You sure you don’t want me to come along?’ asks Roland from the passenger seat, a lingering smell of sweat and booze about him. The shock at seeing him the way he was has not fully faded — Roland, always such a steady and guiding presence in his life now directionless, like he’s been throwing himself against the wall for six years with nothing but hard liquor for company — and he knows that things will never go back to the way they were during the brief year they were together. Before the case reopened. Before the pink room.  

‘Yeah,’ says Tom. ‘I got some things to do. People to see.’ 

‘Oh?’

He squints into the sun-sheen through the windshield. ‘You ain’t the only person that wrote me, y’know,’ he says wryly. ‘Margaret’s been good.’

Roland sounds genuinely perplexed. ‘Who?’ 

‘Margaret Wheeler. Big lady, you interviewed her a few times, fuckin’ fixture in our house? Kept offerin’ y’all tea?’

‘Oh yeah,’ says Roland with sudden clarity. ‘ _Margaret_.’ He doesn’t say anything for the rest of the journey, just stares out the window and acts like Tom can’t feel his eyes on him when he’s not looking.  

Tom drops Roland at his car and makes it to the graveyard in less than twenty minutes. He’s only been by the grave once since moving back to town — it hadn’t been as bad as he’d thought it would. The grave clear of ivy for one thing, perennial flowers planted at the base, a woven wreath neatly propped against the stone — and at Lucy’s too. He had cried then, not for his son but for the continued kindness of Margaret Wheeler after all these years.  

He’s grateful for the sun cheering the place. ‘Hey kid,’ he mutters to the patch of dappled earth below the granite headstone — _Will Christopher Purcell, 1968–1980, In Everloving Memory Of._ He would have chosen a better epitaph if he’d known his bible better back then, but as it was he and Lucy barely managed to get the funeral together let alone give two shits about minor details like grave inscription. ‘I said I’d come back soon, so, uh, here I am. Looks like I can’t stay away from this shithole no matter how hard I try.’  

If Will had grown to be a man of twenty-nine, where would he be now? It’s useless to imagine. ‘I think Julie’s still out there,’ Tom says and his voice quavers in the quiet. ‘Hope you’re lookin’ after her, if you can. I haven’t given up.’ 

There’s no repeat of the feeling he got in the woods that night in Devil’s Den, no whisper or reply from his son so Tom drives out to Margaret’s. The town is fading like an old print, whole properties empty where there had once been families and cars out front. Some burnt, some overgrown. But Margaret Wheeler’s place is still well-kept, an island of homeliness in the sea of abandoned ghost houses.  

It’s like she hasn’t had a visitor for years: her whole face lightens up as she opens the door to see him standing on her porch, like he’s God’s gift to the earth. ‘Tom!’ exclaims Margaret, and takes him in an overpowering embrace. ‘My God, it’s you. Gracious, come in, don’t want you thinking I’ve lost my manners.’ In the past two days he has moved more people to tears than he’s comfortable with. She beams, plies him with pound cake and tea, stories of people he can barely remember. 

‘I wanted to thank you,’ Tom says at last, knees nearly up to his chest where he sits on the plush sofa. ‘For everything you done for us, now and then. The graves…it means a lot.’ There’s so much craft work and memorabilia stacked around the room he scarce knows where to look.  

She sniffs, puts a heavy hand on his leg with genuine care. ‘It was nothing. Anyone with a heart would do it.’ Except no one else did. 

He can’t leave without having to tell her why he’s back, how he’s doing, what he’s going to do — somehow he finds himself saying, ‘I saw Detective West the other day,’ just to have something to tell. ‘I think he needs a friend, Margaret. I wanna help him if I can.’ 

She looks at him, her round face creased with something like pity. ‘You be careful with that man,’ she says, patting his knee again. ‘You watch yourself around him.’ And that’s all she says on the matter.  

It’s dark by the time he makes it back to Roland’s — he couldn’t help but drive down Shoepick Lane on his way out of town. The house is dilapidated and sad, a place where awful things happened; belated reflection of their individual miseries overgrown with ivy and spreading tree branches. He doesn’t stop, just keeps his eyes on it as it recedes in his rearview mirror and out of his life again. 

It’s the kind of thing that would make anyone crave a drink. When he pushes open Roland’s door he finds the man spread out on the couch, chin resting on his chest with a bottle clutched in his hand. It would be so easy. But he slips the whiskey out of Roland’s slack grip and heads to the dog kennel instead, pours the alcohol onto the ground while the dogs raise their paws to the chainlink excitably. ‘I know,’ says Tom. ‘What the fuck’s he think he’s doin’, after all he knows?’

He chucks the bottle into the garden and heads back inside. Roland stirs, grunts with confusion as he sees Tom standing in the dark. ‘You came back,’ he rasps, and the surprise in his voice makes Tom want to reach down and hold him. But he steels himself. 

‘You said you wanted me to stick around. That true?’

 Roland sits up, sluggish but intent. ‘You know it. I got a lot to make up for, man, you can stay as long as you need. I want you to.’ 

‘I ain’t stayin’ if you’re goin’ to drink,’ Tom says flatly, hands on his hips. ‘You know what I’m like — ain’t good for me, and it ain’t good for you. Shit, I’ll fuckin’ sponsor you. But that said, I gotta know if you still want me here.’

The pause stretches out as Roland stares up at him with a clouded expression. Tom thinks he might never answer until Roland sits back on the sofa with his eyes closed, battered face screwed up against his own words. ‘Fuck,’ he says, very gently. ‘Stay. I want you to stay, so help me God.’ 

Tom empties every bottle in the house. It’s going to be a long twelve weeks. 

 

* * *

 

It’s odd, having another person in his house after so long. Roland can’t get over the casual fact of Tom’s presence; it’s a new blessing each time he walks in from the dog-pen or a grocery run to find Tom sitting on his couch like he’s never done anything else. They have an easy companionship, can go days without talking whatsoever. This would have bothered him before — a man more comfortable with a dry comment under his tongue and an agreeable audience — but now he sits and simply enjoys the shared quiet of another human being’s breathing. This is what his life has become.

Not like it’s all rainbows and sunshine, of course. There’s a whole stretch of Tom that’s a mystery: his time locked up, if his forgiveness runs deep enough to erase the memory of Roland’s failure. And under that, there’s Roland’s constant ache for a drink. 

The weeks stretch into months. They take long walks up at Mount Kessler with a different dog in tow each time, read through books from Tom’s AA days together, even go up to Fayetteville to watch the university baseball once or twice but the last time they went a lady asked if they had any kids on the field and Tom’s face turned sour at that. A series of petty distractions, when all Roland wants is for Tom to look at him like he trusts him again. But he can’t even trust himself. 

He doesn’t mean to, he’s not a weak man but he ends up at the VFW on his way home from the store one evening. Makes him think of Wayne, the old fuck, and he’s missing the man’s bullshit extra hard for some reason so he heads in, sits on the same barstool from the night he brought Wayne back on the job. Not his fault he ends up with a scotch in his hands.  

Tom knows all the tricks so Roland doesn’t even bother lying on his return, lugging the grocery bags unsteadily up the porch steps to where the man sits waiting. His mouth thins as he looks up at Roland’s swaying figure but he doesn’t speak.  

‘Howdy,’ says Roland, and chuckles. He knows he’s digging himself into the shit but so what, he feels good for a change. Head nicely buzzed. 

‘How’d it happen?’ Tom asks without pulling his attention away from his book. ‘You remember to get milk at least?’

This calm act is even worse than anger. ‘Nothin’ _happened_ ,’ Roland growls with rising annoyance. ‘Jesus, I can have one drink can’t I? I’m not like—’

‘Like what, me?’ Tom flips his book shut, a muscle jumping in his jaw. ‘Say it. It’s not like it ain’t true.’

‘Didn’t mean that.’

‘So? You’re right, I can’t have even one beer ‘less it turns into ten. That’s how I gotta live. How _you_ wanna live, that’s up to you.’

This should be where Roland takes a step back, considers his next words but he hasn’t backed down from a fight in years. ‘S’not like I spent the past six years sittin’ on my ass gettin’ wasted, I’m not so fuckin’ tragic as that,’ he spits, dumping the shopping at Tom’s feet. ‘I tried to get shit done — tried for months to get a warrant for the Hoyt house, you know that? No one’d give me the time of day, so hell, I had a drink now and then. You think I just gave up?’

‘That’s not what I’m talkin’ about,’ Tom says. He’s got his fists balled up in his lap, book forgotten; Roland wonders what he’d have to say to get him to hit him again. How far he’s willing to stoop. 

‘I bribed a housekeeper,’ Roland continues. ‘She said the whole basement was closed off from flood damage: like shit it was. Got her to go down and the whole thing was bricked off.’ He swings about and plants both hands on the railing, spits into the grass below. ‘I fuckin’ _killed_ Harris James. Think that’s worth a couple of fingers of jack.’ 

A beat as the words set in the air like drying paint. ‘You _what,_ ’ Tom says, voice shaking.

‘Oh, did I not put that in my fuckin’ letters? My bad,’ says Roland casually, hating himself. ‘Wayne and I jumped Harris James to get him to talk; he tried to run and I put him down…if you were wonderin’ why he never showed up to the trial, well, he wasn’t able to. On account of bein’ stone cold dead. My fuckin’ fault.’

The silence between them stretches on and on. Roland closes his eyes and wishes the verandah was a few meters higher so he could fling himself off with greater effect. 

The last thing he expects is for Tom to wrap his arms around him from behind. He tenses, feeling Tom’s hands clasped around his midriff and the press of his face at his back. ‘It’s okay,’ Tom says, muffled into Roland’s jacket. ‘Roland. You did so much…more’n you ever had to. You’re good.’

‘Huh,’ chokes Roland. ‘Think I used to be, maybe.’ Tom squeezes him, very gently, and Roland reaches around to grip one of his elbows. ‘I’m sick of feelin’ like this.’

‘I know,’ mumbles Tom. ‘I know.’ 

They stay like this for some time, Roland braced against the railing while Tom holds him and their breathing settles into a steady unison. A reprieve against anger and reproach. Eventually Tom steps back, trailing his hand through Roland’s until they stand apart like two men who never touch at all.

‘We’ve kinda skipped ahead to Step Five, haven’t we,’ Tom says.

‘Which one’s that?’

‘Confession.’

 

* * *

_ 1998_

Life goes on but he hasn’t forgotten that his daughter’s out there, somewhere. Catches sight of her in every woman, every child; she slips by him in the store, from the windows of passing cars, always walking out of his life without recognition. It tears his heart each time. 

The only place he doesn’t see Julie is in his own worn face in the mirror. 

 

* * *

 

Sunday heralds their weekly joint visit to the nursing home to see Tom’s mother; previously a solitary kind of burden that seemed to exclude Roland until the Christmas holidays rolled around and Tom surprised him with a request. ‘I want you to meet her,’ he had said, not meeting Roland’s eye. Roland didn’t think it prudent to point out when and where he had already met Eloise Purcell, just put on his good sports coat and went along for the ride. 

As it turns out, he’s got a gift for charming old ladies.

Today he and Eloise Purcell sit alone in her quilted and perfumed room, Tom having left to get some cigarettes from the machine in the lobby minutes before. Mrs. Purcell yawns and sets Roland with a confused stare like she’s just noticed that he’s there, her doughy face pinched in suspicion. 

‘Now Tom’s out of the way,’ Roland says, leaning in confidentially to reveal the packet of sugar cookies in his jacket. ‘How ‘bout we break open the goods? Bit of sweetness never killed nobody.’ 

‘These doctors try to stop me enjoying what little pleasures I have left,’ grumbles Eloise, but her face lights up. ‘You’re a dear.’ She takes a cookie and crumbles a section in her fingers, a thought crossing her face as she looks up at Roland and frowns. ‘Tom. You know my son Tom?' 

‘Yes ma’am.’ 

‘That’s good,’ she declares, giving him a thorough once over even though she’s seen him with her son a dozen times before — yet she still manages to surprise him. ‘You’re not a bad-looking fellow, but you better watch that gut.’

Roland slaps both hands on his belly with a laugh. ‘You’re makin’ me blush.’ 

‘I say it like it is…not that anyone listens. Told him not to marry her, you know, but they had the baby on the way. My Tom, stuck with that woman.’ She’s serious now, fixing him with an intent myopic look. ‘Sometimes I think we forgot to teach him how to be happy — like we missed a step along the way. Ain’t seen my son happy since he was a little boy.’

‘Don’t think Tom would want you thinkin’ that’s your fault, Mrs. Purcell. Sure you were a fine mother.’

‘Hah! No one teaches you that either,’ she says and pops the rest of the cookie into her mouth. ‘Think it might have been easier with a girl, but we had Tom and he was different even from the other boys. Never knew why he didn’t have any friends over. Liked his own company. Quiet up until he wasn’t. I remember he hit fifteen and it was like someone hit a switch, all that fighting and drinking and chasing after those dreadful girls. Lucy — Jesus Christ _she_ was a fine piece of work.’  

Roland stretches his legs out at the ankle and tries to imagine Tom as a teenager. Wiry and pent-up, no doubt, something to prove — and then Lucy came along, easy enough to help him prove it. He imagines himself at fifteen, how lucky he was to never knocked a girl up despite all his posturing stupidity. Tom always was an unfortunate bastard. 

‘What're y’all chattin’ about?’ asks Tom from the doorway, and they both jerk out of their respective reveries. 

‘We’re just talking about that slut you call your wife,’ states Eloise matter-of-factly.

Roland chokes on his cookie. To his credit, Tom merely frowns. ‘You don’t have to call her that,’ he says, looking sadly down at his mother as she brushes him off with an expression of disbelief.

‘I’ll stop calling her a slut the day she stops being one. Why don’t you leave her?' 

‘…She’s gone, mom. It’s been a while.’

‘Good. Oh, don’t look at me like that. Blood-sucking bitch is what she is; I hope you told her that ‘fore she walked. Hope you slammed the door.’

_‘Mom,’_ says Tom. It looks like it’s taking all his restraint not to force her memory; Roland leaps in before he can bring up something truly unpleasant so as to distress her into remembrance. ‘We talked ‘bout other things too, didn’t we Mrs. Purcell?’ he says genially. ‘I been hearin’ all kinda things, _Thomas_.’

‘He’s a good listener. You should keep him around,’ Eloise advises her son, then mutters into her chest, _‘…Like I don’t have eyes in my head.’_ If this is not meant for them to hear she does a poor job of disguising it. Roland tries not to laugh as Tom pointedly avoids his eye.

‘Alright mom. We gotta go but I’ll see you day after tomorrow, yeah?’ Tom grips her hand, trying to impress this upon her. It’s no good, of course.

‘I saved these from supper,’ Mrs. Purcell says, slipping a handful of hard candies from the folds of her dress to press into her son’s hand. ‘Give ‘em to the kids, won’t you?’ 

Tom nods mutely, staring down at the assortment in his palm. Kisses his mother on the cheek without meeting her eye and makes for the door, face screwed up. Roland wants to follow but first he has to turn on the cheer as he holds Eloise’s thick hand in his own.

 ‘Goodbye ma’am. You give Doris my regards, I seen her eyein’ me up the last time,’ he says with a wink. ‘Tell her I don’t mind an older woman.’

‘Pity,’ she says with a pointed glance at her son’s retreating back. ‘You take care now, boys.’ 

Roland waves as she is regally wheeled away by a couple of nurses and then sets to hurrying after Tom. He has to jog to catch up — by the time he makes it to the entrance Tom is walking blindly onto the carpark tarmac and doesn’t react when Roland falls into step behind him. He halts suddenly, looks down at the brightly wrapped sweets in his hand. 

‘God _damn_ it,’ he cries, choked, and flings them into the hedgerow beyond. An old woman getting out her car pauses, looking scandalised, but Tom is too busy staring at his empty hands with a pained expression to notice. Roland lays a hand on his shoulder. 

‘It’s not her fault,’ he says. 

‘I know… But damn, she must have stolen a few of those to give away. For _the kids_.’

Roland pulls his sunglasses from his pocket and slides them on. ‘I think your momma thinks I should take you out to dinner,’ he remarks as they make their way to Tom’s car. ‘Kept droppin’ hints, askin’ if I liked Dirk Bogarde, James Dean and the like.’

‘What the fuck’s that meant to mean?’ asks Tom, confusion breaking the cloud of his surfaced grief. ‘ _Everyone_ likes James Dean.’

‘I think it means I should take you to dinner,’ says Roland. Flashes a grin as he takes the keys from Tom’s jacket and gets in behind the wheel. The side of Tom’s mouth twists upwards as Roland revs the engine, middle aged and ridiculous, and a few indistinct faces appear behind the lace curtains that line the building’s windows. 

‘Come on.’ Roland bumps up the radio to some old time rock n’ roll. ‘Let’s give the old woman something to remember.’ 

 

* * *

 

Without alcohol to draw them there, the closest town loses most of its appeal apart from the necessary fact of its airplane hangar of a supermarket.  

On their weekly visits, Roland usually goes around filling up the trolley with dog kibble while Tom grabs bits and pieces in a basket. It’s an unspoken routine but they both know the reason behind it: appearances remain important even if Tom is still resolutely entrenched on Roland’s couch after all these months. 

It’s the kind of precaution that Tom feels inordinately grateful for when he runs into Amelia Hays in the produce aisle. They both look up from either sides of an arrangement of squash at the same time and make direct eye contact; there’s a moment of mutual discomfort as she does a double-take before gracefully recovering and addressing him with a small smile. ‘Tom — Mr. Purcell,’ she says, only sounding mildly surprised to see him in the state let alone this very store, ‘I hope you’re well.’  

‘Hm,’ he nods, suddenly feeling like he’s back in the interrogation room and she’s the one on the other side of the glass. ‘Uh, not too bad. Certified sane.’ The last thing he wants is for Detective Hays to loom out of nowhere, scowling like Tom’s aiming to murder his wife. Thankfully, it looks like both he and she are shopping alone — an illusion that is shattered seconds later when Roland strolls up and chucks a box into his arms. 

‘Heads up,’ he grunts, and Tom catches it on reflex: a Betty Crocker chocolate cake mix. His stomach sinks. Of course Roland had to remember his birthday, right here and now in front of the woman who penned an in-depth book on the death of his fucking family and all his personal failings.

Amelia’s eyebrows creep further up her face as she takes in this new arrival. ‘Roland,’ she says. ‘What a nice surprise.’ 

‘Amelia? Hey…fancy meetin’ you here,’ Roland splutters, wildly overcompensating to the point of sounding like a lecherous old man. Tom winces. ‘Not that you ain’t allowed to shop at Harps of course, just never seen you here before. How’s your man, are y’all still…? Kids?’ 

‘Wayne’s good. So are the kids.’

‘That’s good. I’m glad to hear that. Fine family. You’re lookin’ good.’

She looks between him and Tom. It’s hard to miss the electric awkwardness crackling between them: how Tom has inched to his right to increase the distance between them, how Roland exaggeratedly directs all his attention on her like that will negate suspicion. ‘Are you two here together or…?’ 

‘Naw, we just ran into each other,’ says Roland lamely. ‘Feels like bein’ on the job all over again.’

‘I was sorry to hear about that. So was Wayne.’

‘Ah, Purple got the right idea to bounce when he did. I thought they’d never fuckin’ fire me.’ He laughs uncomfortably. Tom shifts from foot to foot and contemplates bludgeoning him into silence with one of the many squash before them. Escape is the only option.

‘I’ve got other errands to run,’ Tom says, half-stepping away from the conversation. ‘If y’all’ll excuse me.’ Roland grunts and Tom makes to go, even as it strikes him that the other man has the fucking car keys. Typical.  

Amelia actually follows him down the aisle. ‘Mr. Purcell, could I have a word?’ she calls, all propriety and smoothness. 

‘…Yeah. Sure.’ 

She steers him away from a pair of old women with a serious expression. ‘Some time ago a man came to me to discuss my research for the…book…we talked,’ she says and his heart contracts. ‘He said it was for his dissertation, something about violent crimes in Arkansas, but I only recently found out that he has a non-fiction in the works. About the case. My agent managed to get her hands on a copy and I’m afraid to say it’s not good.’

Tom shrugs. She takes that as a sign to continue, saying, ‘ _Defamation-of-character_ not good. I’m sorry.’

It feels like there’s a mound of pebbles trapped in his craw. ‘Great,’ he murmurs. 

‘You could probably sue him for libel once it comes to print. Maybe even stop it from being published at all.’  

‘If I sued everyone that writes a book about my damn kids I’d be one rich bastard. ‘Cept I thought I made it clear I don’t want a dime from any of it.’

‘I remember,’ she says. ‘But I felt you ought to know.’ 

The look on Amelia Hays’ face is one of such genuine remorse and concern that he feels bad for snapping at her. ‘Thank you,’ Tom concedes, allowing his tone to lighten. It’s easy to forget that she saw his son daily all those months before it happened, that she has some claim to his pain too. ‘Something’s been buggin’ me. There was this book Will was readin’ early October back then, some kind of futuristic story — think you lent it to him?’  

She frowns in confusion at this unexpected but charitable segue. ‘He’d read anything with words,’ she says, smiling sadly. ‘He borrowed whatever he could.’ 

‘Yeah. But I remember him talkin’ about this one, he said the title was Shakespeare or something not that I know anything ‘bout that sort of thing. He liked whatever it was. Said you’d given it to him even though it was assigned to a higher grade…he was all proud of himself.’

_‘Brave New World!’_ says Amelia with sudden clarity. ‘It was _Brave New World_.’ They look at each other, the book and Will Purcell almost visible in the aisle between them. Tom blinks. He’s about to say something to break the moment when a teenage girl bounces to a stop beside them, braids falling out of the knot on the top of her head.  

‘Mom,’ she says, all elbows and knees and frustration. ‘Can we go yet? You said we only needed eggs but here we are, like an hour later!’

For the first time Amelia looks ruffled. She puts a hand on the girl’s arm as if to shield her from Tom’s slack stare, looks at him apologetically. ‘Rebecca, honey,’ she says, halting. ‘Can’t you see I’m talking? This is —’ 

Tom rubs the back of his neck as Amelia tries to find the words to explain him to her daughter. ‘Your mom wrote a book about my family,’ Tom says, to spare her the discomfort. The kid’s head comes snapping up from her slouch to regard him with wide-eyed horror.

‘Oh my God, mom,’ Rebecca hisses to her mother. She shoves off her mother’s uncertain hand and tries to hide her gawking behind a polite smile. ‘So, um, what are you doing for lunch?’ she asks Tom.  

Tom nearly drops the basket on his own foot. ‘Becca!’ says Amelia. 

‘What?’ exclaims the girl. ‘Y’all made your career off that book, least thing we can do is take him to Denny’s or some shit. I wouldn’t mind some pancakes.’ 

‘Thanks, but I’ve got plans,’ says Tom before Amelia can open her mouth to address this use of language. ‘It’s nice to meet you, Miss Hays, you’re very kind. Mrs. Hays.’  

Rebecca waves. As he flees as unhurriedly as he can he hears Amelia launching into a speech about respect, and Tom wonders if all teenagers are as brash and refreshing as Rebecca. If Julie ever shared her spark. He dumps the basket by the checkouts and walks out of the store in a haze. It’s only when he gets to the car that he realises he’s still holding the cake mixture in his hand.  

‘What did she want?’ asks Roland from where he’s leaning against the bonnet, rolling a smoke between his fingers. ‘Did you forget the damn cornichons?’

Tom just shakes his head. ‘Wanted to get out of there so fast I just shoplifted this fuckin’ thing by accident,’ he says, holding up the box.

‘Hah! Now you’re makin’ me an accessory, son. Let’s be off for security and Mrs. Hays come runnin’ after us with more small-talk…I’m still sweatin’.

‘ _Fancy meetin’ you here,’_ mutters Tom as they pull out of the car park. ‘Jesus Christ. Thought a cop should know better, I’d of pegged you guilty for just about anything.’ 

‘Says the man who not five minutes ago was stealin’ bread from workers’ mouths. You got no shame.’

‘Think you’ll find it was cake, smart-ass.’

Roland chuckles and taps his cigarette ash out the window in a streaming trail, hums along to the radio all the way home. _Home._ Tom keeps Roland in sight out of the corner of his eye, his thinning hair and whiskery stubble, solid hands on the wheel. Still handsome even after years of bar-fights and alcohol abuse; a bit more rough around the edges is all. 

He shudders to think what they must have looked like to Amelia Hays — a pair of sad battered old queers, maybe. It’s not far off. 

‘Hey,’ says Roland later as they restock the cupboards with the week’s supplies. ‘Ground control to Major Tom.’ He has his hand out for Tom to pass him the last few packets of pasta and rice, half-grinning into Tom’s bemused expression. Tom shakes himself. 

‘Think it tastes better if it’s stolen?’ Roland quips as he tidies away the cake mixture. 

‘Dunno,’ says Tom ruminatively. ‘Only ever bothered makin’ a fuss over birthdays for the kids. One year me and Lucy bought cake for Will each figurin’ the other’d forgot, so there we were like a pair of assholes tryin’ to make it look deliberate. Julie was over the fuckin’ moon about it…sole time bein’ a shit parent paid off.' 

As whenever the kids come up, Roland casts him an oblique look and says nothing. 

The evening passes as most evenings do, with each of them wrapped in their individual pursuits on the couch. Tom reads a tattered Elmore Leonard novel while Roland frowns into the newspaper over a pair of cheap reading glasses that do more for Tom than he cares to admit. It’s not fair how one man can look so ruggedly distinguished while squinting at league tables. Tom tugs at his jeans, turns his attention back to his book before he can be caught staring. 

He must have drifted off, only jerks his chin from his chest as a loud clatter snaps him to attention. ‘Shit, sorry,’ says Roland from the kitchen. Tom sits up and rubs his eyes: it must be nearing midnight and yet the other man is stacking empty bowls by the sink. A smell of cocoa in the air.  

‘Motherfucker, are you bakin?’ rasps Tom incredulously. 

Roland shrugs, back to him, but there’s an audible grin in his voice as he says, ‘Can’t see a reason not to have that cake right now, seein’ as you don’t like fussin’ over birthdays. Thursday’s just another day if you want it to be.’

‘What if I change my mind?’

‘We can add to your double cake tradition, ‘cept I ain’t bakin’ it. Goddamn, you’d think this boxed shit’d be easy.’ He gestures to the mess of crockery and Tom laughs. ‘So much for instant gratification.’

The consideration behind Roland’s spontaneity is strangely moving. A ridiculous swell of affection sweeps over Tom, so unexpected it leaves him only able to stare at Roland where he leans over the counter in his flour-scattered shirtsleeves. The oven hums just loud enough to mask the pounding of his heart. 

Roland smacks the residue from his palms. ‘You want me gone so you can get to bed or you able to wait —’ He checks his watch. ‘— ten minutes for this thing?’ 

‘Can’t _not_ have a piece at this stage. Smells good.’

‘Right answer,’ says Roland, drops heavily onto the couch beside Tom with a yawn. Stretching into it at the wrists. ‘Hey, you ever it hard to sleep without the drink? I been lyin’ awake for what feels like hours since ground zero.’ 

Tom allows himself to lean imperceptibly into the dip of the cushions. ‘Drinkin’ sure solved ‘bout as many problems as it made, that’s for sure,’ he says. Drags a hand down his face. ‘Think you should go to the store alone from now on, or we should take turns. And I oughta rent a P.O. box instead of givin’ this address for mail.’ 

He regrets saying it as soon as the words leave his mouth; Roland stiffens beside him, easy tiredness growing walls and armour. ‘…Yeah? Suppose that makes sense, whatever you think’s best,’ he finally agrees, although his tone is reserved. ‘Don’t it rile you though, havin’ to act guilty when we got nothin’ to hide?’ 

‘Not sure if that’s the truth.’ 

‘What’re you talkin’ about?’ says Roland, heavy frown-line settling above his nose as he turns to look Tom full in the face. ‘Oh.’  

_Oh —_ a sound of surprise and understanding as Tom leans in and kisses him on the mouth, dry and steady with sudden courage. Roland says it again when Tom pulls away, as if the rest of his words have been taken from under his tongue, frown still in place as Tom returns his shaking hands to his lap. It’s been so long coming yet Tom can’t help but wonder if his timing’s all wrong, if Roland still feels the same way about him as he did in ’85, in ’90. ( _It’s always been you.)_

He doesn’t have long to find out: Roland surges forward, cupping Tom’s face to kiss him with deepening intensity and they lean into each other, stubble rasping like catstongue as skin grazes skin; the rawness of it a feeling scraped straight from Tom’s gut. Roland drags him onto his lap as they kiss, his thigh shifting against Tom’s with distracting weight. Tom groans. 

It’s hard to direct his focus to the buttons of Roland’s shirt but he wants to prolong whatever this is for as long as he can. Opens the top two without issue but then Roland grips his hand and looks up at him seriously. ‘Are you sure?’ he says. ‘ _Tom._ I don’t want you to leave again.’

‘Just about fought myself on everything I ever done,’ Tom grunts. ‘Plenty of things I regret but you ain’t one of them.’ 

They stare at each other for a good while, the weight of Tom’s words cementing before them. Like it’s just hitting them now what this means after so long, this continued need. ‘Okay,’ breathes Roland. ‘You know how bad I’ve been wantin’? Years, son.’ 

Tom slides back and lowers himself onto the rug at Roland’s feet. ‘C’mere then.’ 

By all rights they’re too old for this kind of thing, to be fumbling on the floor as if their weathered bodies don’t ache enough. A smell of cigarettes, coffee, faint dog hair as Roland presses against Tom, and it’s good, so good as Roland shrugs off his shirt and helps Tom pull his oil-stained t-shirt over his head, runs his hands over the fading tan-lines on Tom’s biceps and hip. ‘Look at you,’ he says, planting kisses on Tom’s jaw, the dip of his throat, the jut of his ribs, his stomach. 

‘Fuck,’ Tom exclaims as the cold metal of Roland’s rodeo buckle brushes his skin. ‘Take that fuckin’ thing off.’ 

Roland snorts into his shoulder, and then they’re both laughing. ‘If you insist, partner,’ he chuckles, voice gone to gravel as he straightens up to loosen his belt and jeans, lets them slide down on his hips. Like Tom he’s gone grey in some places, remains the same in others but none of these signs of the times take away from the wonder of their continued touching. Rhythm so grounding that there’s nothing but the moment: only Roland’s hands, his mouth. 

It’s jarring then as Roland rolls off him with sudden movement like a man electrocuted. ‘Oh shit,’ he says. ‘The fuckin’ cake. Don’t you move.’ He leaps to his feet, leaving Tom with a great deal of thwarted intentions and an ache pressing against his jeans. The oven clangs open and a burnt smell fills the kitchen, Roland grappling with a tin wearing oven gloves and nothing else, hair mussed. Tom hears him swear. 

‘Wash your damn hands,’ he calls, feeling like his old bones aim to settle into the floor. Like he just might sink into nothing.

‘Who are you, my ma?’ Roland hollers, but the tap sprays metallically into the sink among the other noises. Tom closes his eyes. Lets himself give into the waiting. 

‘Think I scalded my damn ballsack,’ grunts Roland as he returns, cake set to cool along with Tom’s need. Tom languidly stretches his arms above his head, looks up at Roland’s bared nakedness — his casual confidence in his ageing skin — and wonders at the solidness of him. ‘Outside’s just about charred to shit,’ Roland says, proffering a plate of scraped edge-pieces. ‘But the inside’s still good.’ 

He lowers himself beside Tom, pops a sliver of half-burnt cake into his mouth and grins with all his teeth. ‘Fuckin’ A,’ he says. Holds a piece over Tom’s lips, pads of his fingers coming to rest on his chin as Tom chews the cake. It’s sweet and acrid at the same time, not bad but still too similar to barbecue charcoal to be truly nice. Tom swallows, and Roland slips his fingers into his mouth with deliberate care. 

This is more measured, more weighty than before, with less urgency even as Tom feels his hard-on returning while he tongues around Roland’s index and middle finger. The look in Roland’s eye doing just as much for him as the anticipation as the other man unbuttons Tom’s jeans with his free hand, pulling them down unevenly. Slides his hand free with a wet noise and kisses Tom, who can’t help but inhale with a muffled hiss as Roland reaches down and makes use of his slick fingers. 

‘Roland,’ Tom says. ‘Fuck.’ 

The slow pace, they way they press up against each other limb to limb, chest to chest and mouth to mouth; it’s what some people would call making love. It’s almost unbearable. 

Tom swears he hasn’t made a habit of crying since the kids and he’s no sap, but there’s a salty tang in his mouth as he twists and bucks under Roland weight, can’t tell for the life of him if the wetness on his cheek is from his or Roland’s tears when they finally come together in a shuddering embrace. 

They continue holding onto each other long after the semen and sweat has cooled on their skin, Roland growing soft inside Tom but neither of them wanting to break apart. Roland sighs, presses his face into the hair of Tom’s chest. ‘You’d think we never done that before,’ he murmurs. ‘Christ, it’s been a while.’ 

‘Sure has.’ 

There’s a feeling spreading alongside the warmth of postcoital bone-tiredness, something almost unrecognisable. Something like happiness. Tom runs his fingers through Roland’s thinning hair, sees a version of him thirteen years ago as if through layered glass, their actions identical but disparate, separated by the crushed strata of time.  

He prays that things will turn out differently, this time around.

 

* * *

 

‘How’d you sleep?’ Tom asks the next day, jaw clacking as he yawns into the pillows of Roland’s double bed. 

Roland pulls him closer, buries a grin into his back as their limbs tangle together in an easy familiarity. ‘Like a fuckin’ log,’ he says. ‘That’s the truth.’

 

* * *

_ 1999_

The first warm day of the year Tom rolls up his sleeves and mows the whole scrubby lawn from front to back while the dogs leap and roll around in the fresh cuttings. It takes him most of the day; he comes up the steps sweating and oil-streaked to find Roland frying up chops on the grill, a jug of ice tea dripping on the table and _The Traveling Wilburys_ drifting from the stereo. 

‘Gonna get heatstroke like that,’ Roland comments, gesturing with the tongs at Tom’s bare head. Tom moves past him into the house, comes back out with a Stetson from Roland’s wall-mounted collection and gives a serious nod before settling it over his sweat-greased hair. 

Roland gives him a flat look over his sunglasses. ‘You aimin’ to ruin the lining on that thing?’ he says, but his heart isn’t in it. Tom knows he’s got him where he wants him. 

The chops go on sizzling as Tom slouches into one of the deck chairs, tilting the brim down to shield his eyes from the setting sun. ‘Think I should grow back the moustache?’ he asks, dragging a thumb across his upper lip. ‘Complete the look?' 

‘Oh definitely,’ says Roland and leans under the hat brim to wipe the smug smile off his face with a kiss. ‘Always had a thing for men in Westerns.’

 

* * *

 

Things continue fairly steady between them right up until a teenage boy gets murdered in Prairie Grove, less than half an hour’s drive away from Fayetteville and the old Purcell house. It’s all the county can talk about, news spreading statewide but for some reason never breaking further than Oklahoma and Missouri until a month after the death. Like ’80 all over again. Men like those killed out at Woodard’s mutter to each other at bars, barbecues, after church, voicing the same opinion as the rest of the country: the two fags that raped and killed a thirteen-year-old boy deserve to burn in hell.

Things shift again. Old wounds reopen. 

It’s unsurprising that Tom draws into himself, face darkening whenever the story crops up on the news or in a shopfront paper display, or in line at the grocery store. They stop going out together in public, eating in every night with the television turned off instead, Tom coming home from work with few words and little inclination to talk about the fresh dark circles under his eyes. The boxes of photos of the kids unearthed and thumbed through.

Roland feels sick whenever he thinks too long about the news reports, can’t help but let the image of Will Purcell’s stiff body laid out in the coroner’s office swim in front of his vision. Remembers the dreadful swell of relief as the coroner had disclosed that there had been no signs of sexual assault on the body, and even that feeling had added to his nausea as he and Wayne exited the morgue and drove back to the station in unsteady silence. He wonders what unlucky shit caught this particular case. 

It’s not normal, for a man to give thanks for the amount of years it’s been since he’s had to look at the dead body of a child. 

There’s vigils, services, community meetings. He never asks if Tom wants to go; for all he knows that’s where the man disappears to at long stretches at a time. The months pass and the story fades from the public mind, but it has succeeded in bringing up sunken memories from the depths. People remember.  

They’re at a diner one day in early December, the place decked out in flayed tinsel that only accentuates the mismatched colour scheme and tacky lighting. Unusual for them to stop in such a dire joint but they’d spent the morning at the vet with one of the big dogs and they’re both hungry after the long wait. A month since the anniversary but it’s not on either of their minds — until a group of teenagers the next booth over take up the subject of the Prairie Grove murder.  

‘My mom still won’t let me get a job at the video store, cause, you know, the manager’s queer,’ complains one boy. ‘It’s not like the same thing’s gonna happen twice.’

‘Well my parents only let me stay out after curfew this freaking week. What’re they expecting anyway?’

‘My parents are sane,’ a girl chimes in. ‘They don’t give a shit what I do.’ 

‘They never even scared you into keeping to curfew? Remember those horror stories? I was convinced I was gonna be the next Purcell kid.’ The kids all make noises of agreement and a few laugh.

Roland scowls into his plate. Tom stiffens slightly, a pinched expression cutting the lines of his face. He picks at his fries, avoiding Roland’s gaze. Roland wishes the waitress would turn up the terrible Christmas jukebox so as to drown out their next words.

The teenagers make a communal sound of disbelief but one boy continues, ‘First I heard about it was when someone uploaded newspaper cutouts to a BBS thread last year, I swear!’ He has to raise his voice over the heckling. ‘Never knew something like that happened so close to here.’

‘Yeah dumbass, it was this whole thing. My pops says it was probably the dad that did it, got sent to an asylum years later. Killed someone. They never found the girl but she’s probably dead.’ 

‘I heard the dad killed himself.’

Tom is shredding his napkin into a facsimile of snowflakes, his mouth one downturned line. Roland slams his coke down on the table and slides out of the booth, feeling the old sick disgust rising. 

‘Don’t —’ hisses Tom, failing to catch his elbow but Roland is already striding over to the kids with a murderous expression. His boots clack loudly on the chequered floor-tiles and they stop talking, looking up at him with blank curiosity like he’s come to refill their drinks.

‘Hey, fuckheads,’ he says, hands on his hips to show off an invisible badge. ‘There’s people here tryin’ to eat in peace. Didn’t order no sidehelpin’ of your hotshit ideas ‘bout business y’all weren’t even alive for, so would you mind shuttin’ the fuck up?’

They gape at him. One of the white boys turns flaming red, his peers radiating surprise at this use of language by an adult figure. ‘Uh, sorry,’ mutters the girl beside him, mortified. 

A boy with dark hair and a face pitted with acne craters leans forward. ‘It’s a free country, ain’t it?’ 

Roland is ready to murder this little shit himself. ‘Mind repeatin’ yourself there, son? What the fuck did you just say?’

Then Tom has his hand on Roland’s shoulder, saying, ‘Hey. It’s okay, leave it be.’ Roland glowers at the kid, ignoring the stares of the waitress and surrounding diner guests. He realises Tom’s hand is shaking as he says, ‘Roland. Don’t gotta do this on my behalf. Let’s go.’ 

‘Alright,’ says Roland. Steps back. ‘Might wanna find yourself some respect,’ he says to the boy. ‘Might stop the shit gettin’ beat outta you one day.’ He lets Tom drag him outside, and waits while Tom pays the bill. By rights Tom should be the one picking fights with a bunch of teenagers, not Roland. God’s done a lot for the man’s self-control but it doesn’t stop him from looking pissed as he stalks out of the diner, tucking his wallet back inside his jacket with a sour shake of his head. 

‘What the fuck was that?’ he asks, rubbing his hair as if he expects to meet untamed curls from the days when he was wild and hangdog and freshly bereaved. 

Roland turns to apologise, but then two of the girls appear from the diner and approach them with downturned faces. ‘Mr. Purcell —’ says the black girl, practically wringing her hands. ‘We’re so, so sorry. It was stupid to…we didn’t know. Sorry.’ 

‘Ignore Darryl,’ the other girl says. ‘He’s a dick. Could do with havin’ his ass handed to him.’ 

Tom stares at them, eyes a little red. He looks ready to cry — why now and not in the diner Roland can’t say but he steps forward as if to shield him from their beseeching expressions. ‘It _is_ a free country,’ Tom says, shrugging away his pain. ‘Nothin’ I ain’t heard before anyway. You kids stay safe, okay Miss Hays?’  

‘Yeah,’ says the first girl, wincing like he’s yelled at her. ‘You too. Like I said, me and Leanne are real sorry. ’ She grabs her friend’s arm and they re-enter the diner before Roland can realise just who the first teenager is. 

He blinks, stares at the door chiming shut. ‘Shit, that Wayne’s girl?’ 

‘Well done, Detective,’ Tom says flatly. ‘But goddamn, let me pick my own fights next time you wanna beat on some kids.’ He spits into the gutter and moves away, stiff and tight-framed as if waiting for the heavens to rain down blows on his head. 

Roland lets him go. Waits a pace before limping after him.

 

* * *

 

When the flatbed truck pulls up outside Roland’s house Tom’s been gone for twenty-four hours and he’s almost grateful for the distraction, despite the fact that it takes the shape of two dark-haired men sporting baseball bats and matching shitkicker boots. Stocky build and unfortunate ears; they have to be brothers. Glowering up at him like he ought to be impressed by how good a job they’re doing at resembling a pair of assholes.

He’s rung the auto shop where Tom works; he’s been out on the side roads from Fayetteville to the Ozarks all morning with no sign of the man — it’s Tom’s business really, if he wants to get up and go, but God help these men if they had anything to do with it.

‘You fellas sure you’re at the right spot?’ calls Roland, trudging out to the railing while the dogs take to barking. ‘There’s a whorehouse next town over, case y’all feel like wavin’ your dicks around someplace else.’ 

‘Hear you tried to beat up my son,’ says the taller of the two, hitching up his cargo pants. ‘Got anything to say about that, huh, asshole?’ His resemblance to the kid in the diner underscored by a heavy scowl. 

‘I tried beatin’ up your kid he’d be beat up,’ says Roland. ‘Might’ve exchanged words, emphasisin’ the importance of respect…but looks like you ain’t learned it yourself, so can’t much blame him.’ He could talk these boys down, but hell, Tom’s probably halfway back to Lubbock and Roland hasn’t been in a fight since getting sober. It’s been sometime coming.  

He’s just shrugging off his good cardigan and rolling up his sleeves when a car comes rolling up the drive, spewing frozen dirt chippings and mud up from the wheels. Tom’s ’77 Challenger. Like the man has a built-in radar for any going fight within fifty miles, a leftover magnetic draw from the early eighties. The men swivel like tank-turrets to take in the new arrival. 

Tom steps out of the car and frowns up at Roland, disheveled and dead-eyed. ‘Didn’t know you started a Little League,’ he comments, making to approach the house but the insulted boy’s uncle makes to grab his arm. 

‘You might wanna turn around and get back in that car a yours,’ he says. Bat against his shoulder. ‘This is between us and your friend here. Now fuck off.’  

Tom steps back. Roland’s about to tell him to leave, to leave the fight to him, but Tom surprises them all by reaching under his jacket and pulling a gun from the waistband of his jeans, revealing it with a tired scowl. ‘You know, I ain’t hated any man more than your breed of asshole,’ he says, training the gun steadily on the man. ‘If you ain’t outta here in thirty seconds I’m gonna shoot out both your goddamn kneecaps and then set ‘em dogs on you, get it?’  

He looks like he means it. Roland swallows his concern, spreading his hands with a pasted grin as he address the intruders. ‘Castle Doctrine, boys. _A person in lawful control of premises is justified in using non-deadly physical force upon another person to prevent or terminate the commission of a criminal trespass.’_ They’re too busy staring down the barrel of Tom’s gun to appreciate his lawman’s memory. ‘My friend here lives upon these here premises. Think you better listen to him.’  

‘Git,’ hisses Tom. The brothers exchange glances, fight gone out of them as quick as a couple of deflated gamecocks, and make for their truck. 

‘Don’t want you boys back here,’ hollers Roland. ‘Y’all ever heard of Brett Woodard? Look ‘im up’

The men back their truck up awkwardly and drive off without so much as a threatening glance. Tomwatches the truck disappear onto the main road, then hefts the gun in his hand like he’s considering throwing it into the overgrown garden. 

Roland approaches him, hands in his pockets. ‘You alright?’ he asks. ‘That’s one way to save my bacon.’ 

Tom hands him the gun without explanation. Lets Roland empty the magazine and tuck the gun into his own belt before speaking. ‘I saw Hoyt,’ he says shakily, rubbing his face. It’s cold out but he’s trembling with something akin to anger, tiredness.  

‘So you got a gun.’ Roland keeps his tone flat.

‘Big car dropped round to the shop yesterday,’ says Tom. ‘Hoyt’s. Riled me up, seein’ his name like that. Fuckin’ havin’ to fix his car.’  

‘Take it you didn’t plant no explosives in the trunk.’ 

‘Naw. Followed the guy that came to pick it up. He lives out in some ranch-type place on White River, nice spot, not so flashy as the old mansion.’ Roland reaches up and cups the side of his face as Tom’s shadowed eyes blink with tears. ‘I spent the whole night figurin’ whether or not to kill him.’  

‘And?’

‘Thought of the last time I took a gun and went to his house. Don’t think it’d do much good anyhow.’ 

Roland pulls him into a hug, planting a kiss on his forehead as Tom buries his face in Roland’s shoulder. ‘Proud of you, man.’ He rubs his hands across Tom’s back, breathes in the smoke-laced smell of his collar. 

‘Fuck this,’ grunts Tom, voice quavering and muffled. ‘Gonna be twenty years come next year, twenty years of this shit hittin’ me over and over…think I put some distance between it and me, then wham, I’m back in it. Like no time passed at all. New millennium’s gonna kill me.’

‘Think it’s gonna get everybody.’ 

‘Very funny.’ Tom lifts his head and lets Roland kiss him on his jaw, cheek, mouth like it just might alleviate some of his deep hurt. ‘Ought to of let those goons get in a couple of hits for rescuin’ your ass.’  

A wind rattles the dead leaves still clutching to the trees and Roland shivers, holds Tom a little harder. ‘Thought maybe you’d hit the road,’ he says gruffly. ‘You ring me, okay? Even if you decide to kill a man, you ring me and I’ll fuckin’ be there.’  

Tom pulls out of the hug and takes Roland’s hand, his brows lowering as he squints into the flat grey sky like he’s looking for a sign from his higher power. ‘Ain’t got anyplace else I want to be,’ he says, and squeezes Roland’s palm. ‘Like you told those assholes…This is home. Not gonna make the same mistake twice.’  

‘You mean that?’ says Roland. 

‘Yeah man. I am where you are, shitkickers bangin’ on the door and all.’

‘Oughta start chargin’ rent,’ Roland remarks, but he’s grinning as Tom kisses him. A few flakes of snow drift down in a vague scatter as they head up to the house, rest of the winter and a goddamn new millennium stretching out before them like an open field, horizon unknowable but bearing the same face in every direction. Roland thinks they’ll manage. 

 

* * *

 

_ Time goes by like cross-country freight, rattling on and the mileage keeps rising: Julie will be gone thirty-five years the coming November when Wayne Hays decides to drop back into Roland’s life for one last hurrah. They’ve gotten old but some things never change.  _

_ ‘Y’never got married? Not once? I’d of sworn you were married,’ says Wayne, a kind of willing blindness that Roland hasn’t missed once. But then again, maybe it’s not willing. So he agrees to lend Wayne his memory, knowing full well that the rest of him belongs to another man. _

_ The case sharpens its teeth. It’s been waiting.  _

 

* * *

_ 2015_

Tom comes onto the porch only well after the Henry Hays’ Dodge has pulled out of the yard. The tears not yet dry on Roland’s face. 

‘What did he want?’ he says, knowing full well there’s only one thing that would bring Roland’s old partner up here after so long. They’ve spent so long balancing on its edge they’ve almost forgotten what it looks like, the thing from which everything has sprouted like kudzu from the troubled bones of an abandoned home.  

‘That motherfucker,’ chokes Roland, his old friend no longer a memory but still just as faded at the edges. ‘That old motherfucker, goddamn. Comin’ here, askin’ for my help after quarter-century of radio silence like his shit don’t stink.’

‘Don’t think you said no, though.’ 

‘I fuckin’ miss him. Though he - his memory’s shot.’ He makes a dry noise in his throat, and Tom settles a hand nice and steady on his shoulder. ‘Couldn’t even remember how we left it. Hard to stay mad when he’s lookin’ at you like a beat dog that don’t know what it’s bein’ beat for. Wants to go back over the case…outstandin’ business. Didn’t have the heart to tell him to fuck off. He’s my partner. Even after everything.’ 

The mutt Roland refers to as Little Man comes poking around from Tom’s ankles, decides to jump up onto the man’s lap and try licking the salt from his face. Roland grunts but doesn’t push him away.  

‘What am I, then?’ asks Tom. Thinking _the case_ , thinking Will and Julie and all the middle aged women that could nearly be his daughter. He likes to think he’s made peace with it by now. (He’s made peace with lots of things, his nature and his destructive tilt and his goddamn ageing body but this will never be one of them).  

Roland rolls his head back and sighs. ‘Well, shit, you’re my _partner_ with a capital fuckin’ P and he’s my partner. You know what I mean. Never thought back then I coulda talked with him like that, fuckin’ cryin’ like a pair of girls…Never thought I’d be sittin’ out here like this with you neither,’ he says, leaning into Tom’s touch.  

‘It’s okay,’ Tom says. ‘Man, you got heart…best part of you.’  

‘Don’t you start talkin’ schmaltz; one of us got to stay sharp.’ Roland half-laughs as he pulls Tom’s bony hand down to his mouth and kisses his knuckles. ‘I got a damn headache from the cryin’. Since when did I get so pathetic?’ 

‘Guess I been rubbin’ off on you.’

‘Aha, ain’t that right,’ says Roland with a lewd grin and pulls him closer by the belt loops; Tom cuffs him upside on the head. ‘Think Wayne even figured that, thirty years late to the game. Finally got us a best man…’

‘Fuck off,’ snorts Tom. ‘You tryin’ to give him a heart attack?’ 

‘You wound me, son.’ 

They settle into a comfortable silence, level, sharing the green ripple of trees, the chirp of cicadas, the sunset and the new horizon ahead. Neither of them talk of Wayne for days, find a rhythm without needing to discuss it: Tom finds an excuse to be out of the house when the man comes round, and in return Roland never brings up their visits down memory lane. Everything’s normal, save for the long shadow that casts a cold feeling on Tom’s neck whenever he thinks about Roland’s absence too long — just who he’s really been visiting. _Revisiting_.  

The kids crop up in his dreams more than usual. It’s only fair he gets to see them too.

 

* * *

 

‘You think crazy’s catchin’?’ Roland asks one night as they watch reruns on tv, his weatherbeaten face cast in a blank glare from the screen. Tom doesn’t know what to say. He knows Roland means from person to person, from Wayne Hays to himself to the whole fucking world, but he can’t help but focus on another meaning. 

It’s true they’ve been caught in something since 1980. Tangled together in the same net, inescapably intertwined from day one and nowhere near getting free even this close to the grave: that’s what he’d call crazy. Not that he says this out loud. 

 

* * *

 

The interview lady is pretty nice, which is a shame because Roland remembers being a real dick to her on the phone the other month. Not that that’s going to get him to change his mind about the whole thing; there’s something weird about watching Wayne spread out their past to a bunch of strangers, even if there’s an unspoken truth for every word he says. The blonde woman keeps her eyes on him the whole time like one giveaway thread might unravel the whole case.  

It’s actually pretty boring as a spectator. Roland pulls out his phone, and pokes out a brief text. _Interview folks keep trying 2 bring up the mysterious disappearance of Tom Purcell. Where in d world could he be?_  

For once Tom texts back almost immediately: _Taking a shit._  

_Charming. she'll be thrilled_

_according 2 local legend he’s been busy gettin fucked by some stud the past decade… when u coming home?_

Roland snorts and tucks the phone into his jeans, but not before typing: _Jealous._ _c u 8pm._

The sound guy adjusts his headphones and gives him a dirty look.

 

* * *

 

Detective Hays was always tall but his son is built like a brick shithouse with the shoulders of a linebacker. He bends down to Tom’s window and Tom can’t help but feel like he’s been speeding even though he’s sitting in a stationary car, waiting for Roland to finish up inside the Hays house. 

‘Hear there’s been some unsavoury type characters hanging about in the street,’ comments the son, almost smiling but his tone is cop-serious. 

‘Yeah?’ says Tom, flipping his shades down so he doesn’t have to squint up at the man. 

‘I’m cooking barbecue tonight. You wanna come in? Funny, I think him hanging around with his old buddy actually helps…s’good seein’ the two of ‘em together. He’s sharper.’

It’s the last thing Tom wants, but he follows Henry Hays round to the garden anyway. Roland and Wayne are seated at a garden table with a checkers board half-filled between them, glasses of tea at their elbows.  

‘That the time already?’ says Roland, stretching. Buttons of his old summer shirt straining against his belly in a way that makes Tom want to run his hands all over him.

‘We’re stayin’ for ribs,’ Tom tells him, settling down a good few feet away at the end of the bench but Roland pats the wood and he reluctantly shifts a few inches closer. The atmosphere is relaxed, friendly. They’re always good at maintaining distance in public but he can feel the eyes of Henry’s wife on him from the kitchen window.  

Wayne nods at him, polite, but Tom gets the impression that the man doesn’t know exactly who he is — and the feeling is wonderful. Awful but wonderful. It reminds him of his mother, far gone near the end without memory of the kids or his pain, telling him to stay in school on the few occasions she recognised who he was. ‘Sure mom,’ he’d tell her each time, knowing full well his decisions at the age of fourteen and all those after were written in stone. Engraved in funereal script. 

Later, when the Henry’s kids have taken over the checkers board (playing best out of three with Roland and cackling like miniature despots each time he loses), when the food is eaten, Tom hears Wayne refer to him ‘Roland’s friend’ as he helps clear away the dirty plates. The words reach him from where the old man talks to Henry, and they deaden his fear somewhat. All this talk of murder, of justice, and the man doesn’t even know the face of someone he once thought a suspect — nothing is going to come of these cosy chats with Roland. It’s all talk. 

Call it friendship, call it spending time with a dying man. Just not hope. He’s gotten along fine in its absence all these years. 

 

* * *

 

This means he doesn’t think too much about it when Roland texts him an address and nothing else. He’s already in the car. He doesn’t expect much. 

 

* * *

 

The first truth is by far the worst.  

Roland feels sick to his very soul as he looks down at the cringing man snivelling at the table before him: the truth is much, much worse and more banal than he ever could have thought. Here they are, all that knowing finally unspooled before them from the one-eyed man’s lips and they’re still twenty years too late to be any use to Julie Purcell.  

‘I don’t wanna live with this no more,’ whimpers Junius Watts. ‘Take me in,’

Roland can’t blame him. He can feel a similar self-hatred stabbing his own gut: maybe if he’d been on Tom’s side back in ’90 they could have cracked it, could have followed the pink room to the truth but he’d helped bury it alongside Harris James instead. ‘We don’t have the authority,’ he says, mouth twisting in disgust. ‘Besides, ain’t up to us.’ 

Watts lifts his head like a cowed dog looking for a hand to beat him down, like Roland might be the one to put him out of misery but he only steps aside to reveal the shaking figure of Tom Purcell standing in the doorway. Watts’ face creases first in confusion, then terrible despair. ‘No no no — no, not you,’ he babbles, terror-struck. ‘Not you, can’t be, can’t be. Lord no. ’ 

Tom comes to stand at Roland’s side, tears streaking his face and welling from his nose and the scruff of his short beard. Roland only heard him arrive because he’d been listening for it — had sent the text telling him to come — so he knew the man was beyond the kitchen door as Watts unveiled the whole story. The awful silence is broken only by Watt’s garbled weeping. 

Wayne takes out the gun and puts it on the table before Tom. Tom stares at it, whole face clenched like a fist as he takes in the decision and the pitiful man before him. Roland wants to hug him. To shield him from the past fifteen minutes and the image of Julie, beyond them and long-dead but there’s something electric and untouchable in his taut frame — like he just might break if anyone so much as lays a hand on him. 

‘Never meant for — what happened to the boy,’ snivels Watts, reaching out like he might grab Tom by the wrist. Roland is full ready to hit him if he does. ‘You gotta understand, man, them kids, never aimed to harm them. It tearin’ me up…I deserve to die. You gotta kill me. I’m beggin’ you.’

Tom makes a choking noise, palms flat on the table and eyes closed against Watts’ entreaties but his gaze is surprisingly flinty as he raises his head and stares straight at the man. 

‘You really askin’ that, motherfucker?’ 

‘I been waitin’ all this time. Please. You got the right.’ 

Tom straightens up to his full hunched height and fixes Watts with a dead-eyed expression so absent of feeling it makes the hair of Roland’s neck stand on end. _‘God,’_ Tom mutters to himself, _‘grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change.’_  

And with that he turns his back and walks out of the house, leaving Wayne and Roland standing around Watts like men at a gallows without a hangman. ‘What?’ sputters Watts. ‘Ain’t you gon’ shoot me? Come back. He gotta do it— it’s his right. Y’all need to punish me!’  

‘You don’t wanna live with it, fuckin’ don’t,’ growls Roland, and pushes the gun across the table. 

Watt’s howls follow them all the way out of the house. Roland gets into the car beside Tom, lets him cling to his hand as he breaks into gut-wrenching sobs — all the while waiting for a gunshot that never comes. 

 

* * *

 

The grave is neat but lonely, just like all the other anonymous graves lining the old convent cemetery. It’s funny, they’ve come all this way and here she is, finally here below their feet but Tom can’t bring himself to cry. He feels dry. Hollowed out. 

They stand in silence for what feels like hours.  

‘Excuse me Sister, but did you know the woman that’s buried here?’ Roland asks a passing nun. He and Wayne have already talked to the abbess but there’s the chance this woman might know something more of Julie, her life.She pauses, taking in the name, the date.  

‘So many young women bless us by coming here. I’m afraid Mary-July was before my time.’ Her clear grey eyes skim over their laced fingers, the pained look on Tom’s face. _‘He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds,’_ she says, nodding at them both with benediction as she continues on her walk. 

Tom feels the pressure of Roland’s palm and grips all the tighter. _That I Give Aid To The Lost,_ the grave says. All the aid in the world no help once she slipped out of his sight. 

 

* * *

 

The second truth breaks ground only due to an offhand gesture of Henry Hays. 

‘Think you should have this,’ he says to Roland one quiet afternoon when he’s least expecting it, while Wayne’s asleep in the easy chair with his mouth gaping open like he aims to reinvent the term 'fly-fishing'.

Roland frowns at the crumpled note. ‘What’s in Greenland?’

‘Just think you should have it, is all,’ Henry says again, and goes to join the kids out back where they’re kicking an old soccer ball from tree to fence. Leaving Roland with an uneasy pit hollowing out in his stomach as he stares down at Wayne’s handwriting, meaning as unclear as the man’s memory. 

And so he goes for a drive. Doesn’t say anything to Tom until he’s one-hundred-percent certain, and even then his voice trembles with the words as if the neat house and garden might fade into the air with their naming, as if they might lose her all over again. Tom cries, again, perhaps a little harder and more desperate than before.

Wayne may have the remainder of his good sense rattling around his head like so many loose marbles but he is still a fucking mean tracker. A detective. 

 

* * *

 

Someone hits a home-run in the baseball pitch across the road as Tom and Roland head into the roadside bar. They’re both out of practice at this kind of thing — Roland orders a coke and Tom has a water, and they both sit at the bar in near silence while the television casts a flickering reflection on the polished wood. 

The barman casts odd glances at the two obvious teetotallers for a whole half-hour before the man they’re waiting for walks in and orders a Guinness with a tired sigh.

‘Long week, huh?’ says Roland, with a passing toast to the new arrival.

‘Think the same thing every damn Friday,’ says Mike Ardoin, nodding in agreement. He takes off his company baseball cap and stuffs it in the back pocket of his jeans before taking a sip from his pint.

Roland chuckles. ‘I remember that feeling, man. Used to spend weekends holed up in the bedroom, not exactly sleepin’ though,’ he says with a flash-pan grin. ‘Nice havin’ someone to go home to ain’t it?’

‘Sure is,’ Ardoin says, tapping his wedding ring against the glass with a faint rhythm. His hands and forearms are very dark: an outdoorsman. Nothing like the shy kid who cracked out of his shell at the mention of lightsabers, who always thought he’d marry Julie Purcell. Unrecognisable without the name tag sewn into his uniform. 

Tom picks at the scarred counter with the flat of his nail, eyes trained anywhere but Ardoin. Roland shifts his foot so it brushes against Tom’s, trying to bring him back to the game at hand but he just shoots Roland a flat look and shakes his head.  

It’s up to Roland to run this alone. ‘Came close to marryin’ once,’ he comments, and maybe the coke in his hand passes as a rum and coke because Ardoin gives him an indulgent smile instead of moving further up the bar. ‘Can’t say I regret not goin’ for it but I do envy a married man every now and then. New to it?’

‘Be married sixteen years come August.’ 

‘Congrats. Must make quite the pair.’ 

‘We do alright,’ Ardoin says, then comes straight out with the sucker punch. ‘Our daughter got the best bits of us both.’

Tom makes a dry noise. ‘That’s nice,’ Roland says loudly, kicking him in the shin. ‘How old?’ 

‘Eleven. Just won bronze for runnin’ cross country finals last week. Here,’ he says, and passes his phone down the bar. Roland stares down at the picture of a blonde kid, thin and toothy in shorts and an oversized _Ardoin Landscaping_ t-shirt squinting at the camera with a medal round her neck. He passes it along to Tom, who takes it up with trembling hands.  

‘Cute kid.’ He doesn’t know what else to say. The resemblance to the old missing pictures is strong enough to give him the willies.  

‘What about you?’ 

‘Oh, I never went in for that sort of thing, wife and kids,’ says Roland genially. ‘My buddy here though…’ 

He gestures to Tom, who unfolds a tattered photograph from his breast pocket and passes it down the bar without tearing his eyes from the phone clutched in his hand. 

It’s one Roland has seen in Tom’s wallet countless time but nonetheless he glances briefly at the faded print before slipping the photo to Mike Ardoin: _Tom with sideburns and curly hair stretched out on a sofa with a blonde baby in his lap, tired but grinning, Julie ruminatively tugging at his moustache with her chubby fist. A father and child, from before._ The expression of polite interest slides off Ardoin’s face like water, something akin to fear rising to replace it as he stares down at the image of time long gone. 

‘Jesus Christ,’ he whispers, recognition making his voice quaver. ‘It’s you.’ He looks down the bar at Tom with something like horror, evidently connecting the old man’s profile and sunken eyes with those of the young father in the picture.  

A group of men at the table behind them groan as the sportsman onscreen fails in some way or other, masking the howling silence as Mike Ardoin stares at Tom in frozen fear. 

‘Been some time, Mike,’ Roland says. ‘Excited for the new Star Wars?’

‘Jesus,’ Ardoin says again, jaw twitching, taking in the old spectre of his childhood with disbelief. ‘I thought you died.’ 

Tom’s voice cracks, pain welling up like tree sap from injured bark. ‘People keep sayin’ that,’ he says. ‘Reckon I oughta have, somewhere along the line.’ 

Ardoin is tense and high-strung; he looks ready to flee the building, phone be damned. ‘Ain’t here to cause trouble,’ says Roland as if to one of the temperamental dogs. ‘Just have a question or two is all. Give the man that.' 

‘…Okay.’  

The picture seems to hold an awful sway over Ardoin. He keeps glancing at it, then up at Tom, sweating brow furrowed in deep distress and confusion as the moments tick on.

Tom’s throat works but he can’t seem to get the words out. ‘Is she happy?’ he finally chokes, voice thick with emotion. ‘S’all I want to know, man. I gotta know if she’s…if she’s okay.’ 

Ardoin rubs his thumb over the faded image of his wife from long ago. ‘Julie — she’s okay,’ he murmurs. ‘Wasn’t for so long, hell, we still have our days…but we’re happy. She’s happy. Got us a good life.’ 

Something in Tom’s expression collapses in on itself and he lowers his head to his clasped hands and starts to sob in earnest, letting out a low keening noise that makes the barman take a tactful half step away. ‘Thank you,’ Tom sniffs. ‘All this time…God.’

‘Hey —’ says Mike, seemingly bewildered at where this is going. ‘It’s okay. She’s okay.’ 

_‘Thank you.’_  

There’s a tightness in his own throat as Roland pulls Tom in against his shoulder. He wants to kiss him right here and now in public in front of God and this new son-in-law, he wants to shout the news from every street corner and window: Julie Purcell is alive and okay.  

‘My man, get this fella another drink,’ calls Roland to the bartender. ‘Bearer of the best fuckin’ news I’ve heard in thirty-five years.’ 

Mike Ardoin shakes his head, eager to get gone now Tom is drawing the rest of the bar’s attention.He pulls his hat back onto his head and makes as if to leave but Tom reaches out and seizes his hand. 

‘Don’t you let them out of your sight. Promise me,’ he says, red-eyed and almost desperate. ‘Let her be happy — I ain’t aimin’ to ruin that, you hear me? Julie Purcell’s dead, and her father too. Let her have that.’ 

Mike nods slowly, pulling his wrist free from Tom’s beseeching grip. ‘You look after yourself Mr. Purcell.’ 

Roland slides his card into the man’s pocket. ‘You’ll find him where you find me. Case you ever need to get in touch.’  

Mike Ardoin lifts a shaky hand at the door in farewell before stepping out into the bright square of light beyond. Leaving a half-drunk pint and two old men crying at the bar, world rocked to its very core and yet continuing on as if nothing remarkable has happened. A cheer goes up as the home team scores.

 

* * *

 

The knowledge that his daughter is out there changes everything and nothing. He’s lived with her loss for over half his lifetime, didn’t even notice its crushing weight until it was lifted from his shoulders with one conversation. She’s happy. She has a daughter. A husband. 

For the first time he feels like a father again. Proud. 

 

* * *

 

All of Roland’s neighbours, and anyone else within a ten mile radius, know that if they’re having car trouble they can always go to the two old men that live together up the mountain backroad. They don’t order in parts and they don’t advertise, but they’ll do whatever short fix needs done to get the car up on its last wheels — and they charge better than any of the auto-shops in town. 

This is why Tom is elbows-deep in Harry Elkins busted engine when the blue truck pulls up the driveway. ‘Roland!’ he yells, and turns back to the task at hand. Only realises just who the truck belongs to after Roland has come out onto the porch and Mike Ardoin descends from the cab.  

‘We look like we need landscapin’?’ calls Roland. 

Mike Ardoin closes the truck door with a half-grin and looks around the property, hands on his hips. ‘Yeah, actually. I got a lawn tractor in the back think could be a help,’ he says, wiping some dirt from his forehead. ‘Been doin’ a few calls, thought me n’ my helper here could give you a hand. If that’s all right with you.’ 

The other door opens and a girl hops down from the truck, comes over to stand by her father. She tugs at his elbow and whispers something to him. He laughs. ‘Yeah hon, those are a lot of dogs. Sure one of these gentlemen would be happy to let you get acquainted.’  

A rock plummets into the surface of Tom’s stomach. Doesn’t remember dropping the wrench in his hand but it hits the ground with a loud clatter; the girl’s corn-yellow hair, easy stance beside a father she obviously loves hitting him like a freight train. The girl looks uncertainly up at Ardoin.  

‘You like dogs, Miss?’ asks Roland, doing a better job than Tom at appearing unshaken and half-way sane. ’Come on. Let’s say hello while your pa gets himself set up. I’m Roland…pleased to meet you.’ They shake hands, the girl shy but taken by his gruff but courteous manner.

‘I’m Lucy,’ she says. 

‘And that’s Tom. Don’t mind him, he ain’t much of a charmer,’ Roland says with a wink. ‘Unlike some.’ 

 Tom watches them head towards the dog-pen, the girl bounding ahead and Roland limping stiffly after and something bubbles up inside his chest until he can’t help it. He starts to laugh. It’s not particularly funny but it’s so absurd, so utterly unimaginable that the carefree young girl is named after _his fucking dead wife_ that it has him leaning into the engine to hide his helpless shaking.  

Ardoin steps cautiously closer. ‘This okay? I shoulda called.’  

‘Fuck me,’ wheezes Tom. ‘You tellin’ me _my daughter_ called her only child after mother-of-the-year Lucy fuckin’ O’Brien?’ 

Ardoin pauses. ‘I had grandmother Lucille. Seemed to fit for both.’  

The laughter has stopped but now there’s a stitch stabbing at his side. Maybe he’s having a heart attack — that would be just his luck. ‘Well, shit. Hope your grandma was a saint,’ Tom says. ‘…I do appreciate it though. You comin’ out here. With her.’  

‘Looks like it’s gonna be hard gettin’ her home. She’s been askin’ for a dog since she was five years old.’ They stand side by side and watch Roland putting the dogs through their paces, at Lucy Ardoin radiant with joy as she tussles with the big Labrador mix. Ardoin slaps Tom’s shoulder, heads to the truck. ‘I oughta get to work,’ he remarks. ‘How else am I gonna explain why we came up here?’ 

Tom lets him set up the mower; he’s met the man twice but it’s enough to know that his daughter’s husband is kind; kind enough to bring his child here, to give Tom this undeserved glimpse into their lives. It sends the old sting of tears to his eyes. If it’s not possible for a man to die of happiness, he just might be the first. 

 

* * *

 

Down at the dog-run the girl has Roland under serious investigation — could give Purple Hays a run for his money for the way she’s standing with her hands on her hips. ‘Why don’t you give them names?’ she asks, frowning at this lack of etiquette.

Roland props himself up on the kennel roof, massages his sore back. ‘Well, okay, I lied,’ he admits. ‘One fella has a name, see that grumpy-lookin’ grey mutt at the back? I call him Tom, on account of the fur and unfavourable disposition.’ 

Lucy giggles, glancing up at the porch to where Tom sits in one of the battered lawn chairs. Some of the humour slips from her thin face. ‘Why does your Tom look so sad?’ she asks. 

‘Aah he ain’t sad,’ Roland says, scoops up Little Man to save him from his excited kennel-mates. ‘Just got a funny way of bein happy, see? You ever feel so much you just can’t help cryin’?’

The kid contemplates this, wrinkles her nose at the question. ‘I don’t think so…’

‘Well that’s good. We just gotta let him be, let’s play with Tom the Dog for a while instead huh? That’s it.’

 

* * *

 

The summer stretches on and Mike Ardoin continues to bring his daughter over to their house: after a few weeks he doesn’t even bother pretending to do work around the property, just simply brings Lucy to play with the dogs. After two months he drops her off for an hour here and there and leaves them to it. It’s a glorious yet awful responsibility. 

Tom watches her like a hawk. Lucy to her credit accepts the quirks of these two men with an open mind, taking over dog duty with an iron determination as if convinced neither of them are up to cleaning out the dog kennels; she grooms each occupant with a flow of lively chatter, testing out their new names and sneaking handfuls of biscuits into their pen inside her dungaree pockets. 

‘Them strays ain’t never looked so neat,’ says Tom one afternoon, after they’ve wrestled five dogs in and out of a makeshift bathtub on the lawn. ‘You got a knack. Be winnin’ fancy dog shows ‘fore you know it.’ 

Lucy grins up at him. ‘Using a comb isn’t _that_ hard,’ she says, teasing out a knot of fur while the sheepdog writhes on its belly before her.

Tom runs his hand over his head with an affront, considers how he ever got to the stage in life where being insulted by a sixth grader is a highlight of his week. ‘Was windy earlier,’ he says, and she laughs. The noise goes straight to his heart and settles there like a knife. 

‘We got biscuits n’ gravy for supper, that sound good Miss Lucy?’ asks Roland, emerging from the house with the fold-out table. Lucy nods vigorously. Leaps up to help carry out the rest of the cutlery and chairs. The shade creeps up the lawn to meet them as they eat, contented and tired in the best way — even if most of Lucy’s sausage ends up in the dogs’ snooping mouths. 

‘You oughta plant some things,’ she says, twisting her legs up onto her chair with a gesture to the open plot of land. ‘Get some beans or carrots…we got lots. I like gardening.’ 

‘Never had much of a green thumb,’ Roland answers. ‘Not sure an innocent pumpkin could survive my tender care.’  

Lucy frowns at him like a grade school teacher, patient and calm as Amelia Reardon in the pursuit of spreading knowledge. ‘My mama says you’d be surprised how stuff grows in all kinds of places. Like mushrooms --’ 

Tom slides his empty plate onto the table. ‘Growin’ in the dark,’ he says, the image of Julie alone underground churning his stomach. But then he imagines her garden — she has the outdoors now, light and things that grow: plants and flowers, this daughter. 

‘I gotta go ring Wayne,’ Roland says, slapping his hands on his thighs and slowly getting to his feet. ‘You still okay me stayin’ over tomorrow night? We’re gonna catch the game, prob’ly fall asleep before it hits halftime.’

‘Course.’ 

‘You tell your daddy hello, right kiddo? Gimme that plate ‘fore you feed that to the dogs too…don’t think I don’t see big fella there nosing for more scraps. Used to be a cop, y’know, and not a half-bad one.’ 

‘Yessir,’ she grins, and the both watch Roland leave carrying the dishes with Little Man balanced in the crook of his elbow. Tom leans back in his chair and lets the weak rays of sun warm his face while Lucy practices cartwheels on the grass. It hits six o’clock and no blue truck pulls into the driveway — it’s coming on half-past when a silver sedan bumps up the road in a trail of dust. Lucy gathers herself from the ground with a grin. 

‘Thought maybe they’d forgotten ‘bout me,’ she says. Tom picks up her abandoned jacket and follows her to the car, feeling every step jar in his knees after an afternoon of kneeling by the dogs. The driver, when she steps out of the car, is not Mike. 

‘Hey mama,’ Lucy says. She waves at Tom with an easy grace and gets into the car, leaving Tom hand half-raised in return to stare at the woman smiling gently at him. Realisation hammering home.

‘Hi,’ Julie Ardoin _née_ Purcell says, and Tom has to clench his jaw to stop himself from letting out a cry of joy, or grief, or every feeling from the past thirty-five years combined. ‘I’ve heard so much about you from Lucy. It’s so good, you lettin’ her help out here - she’s all about being a vet these days.’

‘Yeah. Havin’ her around makes things a lot easier for us old fellas.’ 

He doesn’t trust himself not to drop to his knees and howl, but Lucy is watching from the car — and his daughter’s blue eyes are on him, unclouded and sincere. She looks like everything he imagined, a blend of all the women that looked like her over the years, but most of all she looks like a mother: it’s in her smile, her sensible clothes, the pulled-back dirty-blonde of her hair and careful stance. She has managed this without him. 

The spread of Julie’s smile crinkles her eyes and puts deep marks by her mouth. Did she always have dimples? She must have done but he can’t remember the sight of her laughter.

‘It’s her birthday comin’ up,’ Julie says, stepping forward so her daughter can’t hear from the car. ‘If it’s okay with you she could choose out one of the dogs? It’s a war of attrition we’re finally ready to lose. Just name a price.’

Tom swallows and tugs at the cap on his head. ‘Naw, we don’t sell. Be happy to give you one though. Know exactly which one she’s got wrapped round her little finger, lemme show you.’ 

‘We couldn’t possibly let you —’

‘It’s nothin’. Don’t believe in unpaid labour. She’s earned it.’ 

He walks to the kennel and she follows at his side, brushing past him as he holds open the wire door for her to pass through. The copper-coloured dog comes bounding at his whistle, and leaps around their knees until he stills her with a command. 

‘She’s been helpin’ us train ‘em. Roland - uh, my partner - used to let the dogs run around do whatever they wanted but I got fuckin’ tired of gettin’ knocked over. Had this Great Dane that could take you down just by sneezin’.’ 

Julie laughs, letting the dog sniff her wrist and hand before giving it a good scratch behind the ears. He remembers with a painful jolt that she used to crawl around the house pretending to be the bull terrier from _The Incredible Journey;_ Will always insisted on being the retriever, when he was still young enough to play along. What the fuck had the dog’s name been? 

‘Sir, are you feeling alright?’ 

She’s looking at him with slight concern, fully on her feet. He looks down and sees her hand on his arm and is unable to hide his trembling. ‘Bad heart,’ he says, mouth dry. ‘It comes and goes.’ After years of having his heart crushed over and over it barely feels like a lie. 

‘We best let you rest,’ she says and they walk back up to the car together, her hand on his elbow as if she’s afraid he might collapse. ‘That’s really kind of you, about the dog. Lucy’ll be thrilled.’

‘Least I can do.’ 

‘I’m sorry to miss your friend,’ says Julie. ‘We’ll have to catch you both together, maybe next time?’ The prospect of a _next time_ rings like a bell in his head and dampens his speech. He nods. 

She takes his hand in hers and shakes, and he marvels at her solid grip. Amazingly undamaged. 

‘July,’ Tom says, and she stills somewhat with her hand still in his. He feels perilously close to tipping over the edge, close to holding her to him with every apology and prayer he ever said spilling from his lips but from that there is no return. 

Julie frowns slightly. ‘I’m sorry?' 

‘Lucy’s birthday. I always liked July.’  

Some of the deeper dregs of darkness clear from her expression and she smiles again. ‘So do I. My favourite month.’ 

He tips his hat, steps back a few paces. ‘You be safe, Mrs. Ardoin. I’m sorry.’ 

‘For what?’  

He has never been a good father, and so he lies to his only living child with the only words he can think of. ‘I’m showin’ my age,’ he rasps. ‘Don’t pay me any mind. Y’all’re welcome anytime.’ 

Julie fixes him with an steady look, searching and curious and piercing. For a moment it feels like she is seeing him, and his heart leaps into his mouth, but then she shakes herself and lifts her hand in a wave. ‘Bye now,’ she says, and Tom watches her get into the car with her daughter. They drive away, waving momentarily before the road swallows them up and it’s like they were never there.

Tom sinks to the ground. The grass cool and grounding against his face and hands. 

‘Hey,’ comes Roland’s voice after a while. ‘The fuck? Please tell me you’re prayin’ and not havin’ a stroke.’  

Tom lifts his head and looks up at Roland. ’She was here,’ he says. 

‘Who?’ 

Roland reaches out a picks a piece of twig from his shoulder, eyes serious and questioning. 

‘Julie…Julie was here. Shit, Roland, I thought I was gonna die.’ 

‘What? You serious?’ 

‘Came to pick up Lucy. We, uh, talked.’ 

Roland’s knees makes a gun-shot crack as he lowers himself beside Tom on the lawn. ‘Well, what was she like?’ he asks, Mr. Lawman needing the details. ‘How did she look? Man, can’t believe I missed her, classic fuckin’ shit-for-luck.' 

‘She looked good,’ says Tom, and presses his hand to his mouth to stifle a sob. ‘Fuck…she was all grown up. My girl. She looked — she looked _normal_.’  

‘That’s. I’m glad. C’mere.’ Roland’s hands pull Tom in towards his chest and they sit like that, half-embracing, half-sitting as the last glimpse of sunlight shines through the trees and speckles the ground with golden light. ‘How you feelin’?’  

Tom snorts into his shirt. ‘I feel old. Ready to die happy.’ 

‘Don’t you dare, motherfucker,’ rumbles Roland, stroking his hair with possessive care. ‘You ain’t goin’ nowhere without me, and my ass got a few more years left ‘fore I hit the dust.’ His roaming hands find the pulse at Tom’s neck, the other point at his wrist, and Tom feels the rhythm of his own heart jump under Roland’s fingers. ‘Two of us ain’t dead yet.’ 

‘Guess that’s all right with me,’ says Tom, and leans up to kiss him on the mouth.

‘Damn right, son.’ Roland is sunburnt, wrinkled, in need of a shave, and undeniably _his_. The only thing Tom ever had that didn’t end up slipping through his fingers. 

He can feel his legs going dead under him, shifts slightly and puts his head on Roland’s shoulder ’By the way, you’re givin’ ‘em Cooper. The dog.’ 

‘Since when?’

‘Since my fuckin’ daughter asked me for her, asshole.’

Roland chuckles and twists around, stroking Tom’s scratchy jawline with a wicked gleam in his eye.Even after all these years it sends a current of longing right into Tom’s bloodstream. ’M’kay, _gramps,’_ he says, knowing full well what he’s doing when he lowers his voice to a gravelly undertone. ‘Since you’re callin’ the shots ‘round here, why don’t we head on inside so you can tell me what else I’m gonna do that I ain’t yet privy to?’

‘Think you’ve got some idea,’ murmurs Tom, and for the first time his mind is clear of worry; the awful thing that made up their first meeting and everything after has finally loosened its grip. There’s only room for _this_. 

‘Yeah,’ Roland says. ‘I got a few.’ 

 

 

 

  

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Comments make my day! Thanks for reading.


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